FOCUS: A nourishing rain of books for Charleston County

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By Patty Bennett-Uffelman  |  A recent article about urban “book deserts” in the New York Daily News highlighted a universal challenge for low-income families with young children:  limited access to books.

The article focused on urban areas where concentrations of poverty and changes in technology have led to the closure of book stores, but in Charleston, some of our driest book deserts are rural areas, where families may live miles and miles from the closest book store or library.

Bennett-Uffelman

According to authors Naomi Moland and Susan Neuman, “Book deserts are particularly detrimental for young children. Babies and toddlers (who do not yet have access to books in schools) need to be surrounded by books to develop preliteracy skills. When very young children are exposed to books and reading, they develop vocabulary and stretch their brains. When they don’t, they enter pre-K or kindergarten behind their peers, opening racial and class disparities that only grow over time.”

Begin with Books (BWB) has unleashed a virtual tsunami of books into Charleston County’s book deserts.  When it initiated operations in 2010, BWB focused on the rural parts of the county, starting there because of the critical scarcity of literacy resources.  In the extreme southern and northern parts of Charleston County, a family might have to drive as far as 35 miles to purchase a children’s book.

By delivering age-appropriate books to infants and toddlers by mail — one book to every enrolled child every month for up to five years – Begin With Books has vanquished most of Charleston County’s book deserts.  Over the past six years, BWB has delivered 130,167 books directly to babies’ homes by mail.  This averages 15 books for every pre-school-aged child in BWB’s 14 sponsored zip codes.  Nearly 80,000 of these books have been delivered in rural areas of the county – Adams Run, Awendaw, Edisto Island, Hollywood, Johns Island, McClellanville, and Wadmalaw Island — where literacy access used to be particularly challenging for low-income families.

Today, just six years after startup, Begin With Books is delivering monthly books to 71 percent of the infants and toddlers on Johns Island and to more than 60 percent of the children on Edisto and Wadmalaw islands.  About half of the children in Awendaw, McClellanville and the Hollywood area participate in the program.

Once the renourishment was well underway in Charleston County’s rural book deserts, BWB moved on to low-income urban areas, opening enrollment successively on the Charleston peninsula, West Ashley (29407) and North Charleston (29405).  Today, nearly 4,000 Charleston County infants and toddlers are participating in the Begin With Books monthly book program, which is free to families.  This represents 50 percent of all age-eligible children in sponsored zip codes.

BWB’s six-year growth has been stupendous, increasing enrollment by more than 600 children per year, and adding territory at a rate of two to three zip codes per year.  What does it take to add a zip code and revitalize another book desert?  Funding for all the age-eligible children who live in that zip code.

Begin With Books’ next target is the 29406 zip code in North Charleston, which will require start-up funding of about $66,000.  You can help keep the books coming with a sponsorship gift via our website, beginwithbooks.org, or by mail to Begin With Books, P.O. Box 183, Charleston SC 29403.

Just $165 sponsors a child’s full five-year participation in the program and delivers a personal library of 60 books.  For more information, please email beginwithbooks@gmail.com.

Patty Bennet-Uffelman, a retired entrepreneur who sold a computer software business in the 1990s, is a director of Begin With Books, founded in 2010.

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