Today we have a guest post from Dillon Kalkhurst, Director Community Engagement & Strategic Partnerships for Scholastic Book Fairs.
Scholastic Book Fairs recently teamed up with the Sandals Foundation to promote the joy of reading among students who live in the Caribbean Islands. The collaboration was announced last month at the annual Social Media on the Sand conference, which was held in Turks & Caicos.
As part of this collaboration, Scholastic Book Fairs is sponsoring this year’s Reading Road Trips, the Sandals Foundation’s educational outreach program. Through this program, Sandals and Beaches Resorts guests have the opportunity to visit a school supported by the Sandals Foundation. While there, guests can lend literacy, comprehension and vocabulary support to students while also giving them books.
In addition, Scholastic Book Fairs, through the Scholastic Possible Fund, donated 25,000 books to local schools supported by the Sandals Foundation in Jamaica, Antigua, Saint Lucia, The Bahamas, The Turks & Caicos Islands, Grenada, and Barbados. Students and educators in the Caribbean will also receive a one-year subscription to Scholastic’s BookFlix program, an online interactive literacy resource that helps reinforce reading skills by pairing classic fictional video storybooks with nonfiction e-books from Scholastic.
While at the conference, popular parenting bloggers and newly-published Scholastic authors Amy Mascott (Teach Mama) and Allison McDonald (No Time for Flash Cards) shared their first-ever parenting book, Raising a Rock-Star Reader, with the 100 parenting bloggers in attendance. In their book, Amy and Allison aim to help busy parents get their child “reading ready” by providing age-appropriate booklists to help infants, toddlers and school-age children discover the power and joy of reading.
Scholastic Book Fairs had a great time speaking with attendees about the importance of literacy and how parents can volunteer at their children’s school to help promote independent reading. Recalling the importance of books and her experience with the Scholastic Book Fair, blogger Sarah Pittard said, “Reading has opened up the world to our children and inspired them to get out and see it.”
