Kent County’s Great Start Collaborative launched the One County, One Book Initiative in 2020 with the goal of increasing shared reading moments, conversations and early learning experiences at home. The program has placed more than 67,000 books and literacy kits into the hands of families.
“In our initial launch, we had 7,000 copies of a book and literacy kits, and we thought, this is a great way to build excitement in our community and just build knowledge of the importance of early literacy if we could have families and children reading the same book.”
Great Start Collective Director Paula Brown says the program has been a success. Last year alone, 15,000 books were distributed.
“Unfortunately, funding cuts from the state this year, we had to scale those efforts back and we were only able to do 10,000 books this year.”
Deep cuts that are putting an end to the program. Brown says that while the end is bittersweet, she’s hopeful for its return should funding be restored.
“Now we’re talking about building literacy and then also maybe even teaching second languages in certain cases.”
This year’s book, Wimee’s Dreams, was printed locally and written and illustrated by local talent.
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