Celebrating 20 Years of Book-A-Day
By Maria Paz Alegre, Lower Division Teacher Librarian
An Allen-Stevenson boy loves to read, and most would agree that readers aren’t born; they are made. As such, we are thrilled to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of The Book-A-Day project, a beloved signature program from the Allen-Stevenson School Library! In 2004, Bonnie Tucker, former Lower Division Librarian, and Sarah Kresberg, Director of Library Services and Educational Technology, attended the annual conference of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), where they were introduced to a daily book program started by California public school librarians. Thus, an A-S Tradition was born.
The importance of early exposure to picture books has long been common knowledge, an understanding further substantiated by The Ohio State Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy in their 2019 research. Published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, this study found that children reading just one book daily are exposed to around 290,000 more words by age five compared to those not regularly read to by a parent or caregiver. Furthermore, exposure to a more extensive vocabulary was found to directly impact school performance. As Jessica Logan, lead author of the study and assistant professor of educational studies at The Ohio State University, stated, “kids who hear more vocabulary words are going to be better prepared to see those words in print when they enter school. They are likely to pick up reading skills more quickly and easily.” In 2022, The National Literacy Trust reported on a national study finding that boys lagged behind girls in reading enjoyment (Cole et al., 2022), while the National Center for Educational Statistics showed that girls consistently outperform boys in reading achievement, cementing the importance of motivating boys to read at an early age. This makes the role of our educators and Library faculty all the more essential.
With our youngest A-S students in mind, Sarah and Bonnie first launched the first Book-A-Day program for kindergarten, encouraging boys to take home and read a new book daily. The benefits were two-fold: Students are exposed to new literature and vocabulary words, while parents are spared having to read the same book repeatedly! Better yet, each book was hand-selected by their librarian.
Each Kindergarten classroom received delivery of twenty books, and teachers created a corresponding number chart to track book circulation. After one month, books were rotated between classrooms, allowing students to access new titles and create shared literature across the grade. After the rotations were completed, a new selection of books was given to each classroom for students to enjoy.
The Book-A-Day program proved to be a huge success! So much so that in 2016, Bonnie presented the program to the Hudson Valley Library Association (HVLA), an organization of independent school librarians in and around New York City. In attendance was Maria Paz Alegre, who, at the time, was the Lower School librarian at The Dalton School.
Inspired by the presentation, Maria Paz Alegre successfully introduced the program to Dalton. Upon Ms. Tucker’s retirement, Ms. Alegre transitioned to her role as the Lower Division Librarian at The Allen-Stevenson School and proudly continued the beloved program–making a few additions of her own. She created an updated chart of books with students' faces to keep track of the rotation and curated each box with literature that reflected award-winning writers, new authors, diverse perspectives, classic titles, social/emotional learning, and, of course, books that would make both parents and children laugh out loud!
Unfortunately, the Book-A-Day program was halted during the pandemic, as remote and hybrid learning made daily book sharing challenging. The following year, Ms. Alegre expanded the program to include First Grade students for the first time, giving boys who were remote during their Kindergarten year the Book-A-Day experience. While the extension was meant to be temporary, the response from First-grade parents was so enthusiastic that the program is now offered to both K and first-grade boys. Today, the K-1 Book-A-Day program boasts annual reads of up to 400 titles across the two grades.
Due to the program's success, Maria Paz presented Book-A-Day at the NYSAIS Diversity Symposium and the NAIS PoCC conference. Librarians who attended have since replicated the program in schools nationwide, from Brooklyn to Texas and even as far as Hawaii!
Allen-Stevenson boys are avid readers, and the Book-A-Day program establishes a strong foundation for their love of literature to grow. We are proud to have supported countless boys with twenty years of Book A Day literature!
Logan, J. A., Justice, L. M., Yumuş, M., & Chaparro-Moreno, L. J. (2019b). When children are not read to at home: The million word gap. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 40(5), 383–386. https://doi.org/10.1097/dbp.0000000000000657
Cole, A., Brown, A., Clark, C. and Picton, I. (2022). Children and young people’s reading engagement in 2022: Continuing insight into the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on reading. London: National Literacy Trust.
Auxier, B., Stewart, D., Bucaille, A., & Westcott, K. (2021, November 30) The gender gap in reading: Boy meets book, boy loses book, Boy never gets book back. Deloitte Insights. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/technology-media-and-telecom-predictions/2022/gender-gap-in-reading.html .
