The Charlotte’s Web Mobile Children’s Library has received the Lois Lenski Covey Foundation’s 2018 Bookmobile Grant, an award of $3,000 to purchase books for the bookmobile’s circulating collection.
Rachell Frazian, youth services librarian and bookmobile manager, said she observed that children who visited the bookmobile needed more early chapter books and elementary-age graphic novels to offer a welcoming introduction to reading.
“The Lois Lenski Covey Foundation’s 2018 Bookmobile Grant Program will allow the bookmobile to build its collection of early chapter books, series chapter books and elementary-age graphic novels to encourage children in developing the habit of reading and growing their skills in reading comprehension,” Frazian said.
An estimated 60 percent of the children the bookmobile serves are below grade-level readers.
Studies show if children are not proficient readers by fourth grade, they will fall behind. Teachers expect children to know how to read at this point and expect them to read to learn about other subjects. If children are not comfortable reading and do not receive help, they become disengaged.
If a child does not receive help, the lack of reading skills creates larger issues as the child grows into an adult, causing problems with such things as job applications, car loans, and accessing health services for themselves and their families.
More than 70 per cent of inmates in America’s prisons cannot read above a fourth-grade level. The Department of Justice reports, “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure.”
For children transitioning away from easy readers, series chapter books are appealing and encourage them to continue reading after the first book. For children who are intimidated, or not interested, in chapter books, graphic novels provide an age-appropriate option to transition away from easy readers.
Graphic novels have a non-threatening visual format that facilitates reading comprehension by making meaning out of vocabulary and content. Using sequential art and text to build reading comprehension can bridge to other reading experiences.
The idea for the Charlotte’s Web Children’s Library began in 1997 when Charlotte Benton, the former mayor of Lompoc, wanted to donate her estate to the Lompoc Public Library to create a children’s library.
Benton grew up in post-World War II Germany and the local children’s library was her favorite place where she felt safe and comforted. Benton wanted to share this feeling with the children of Lompoc.
The bookmobile is a literacy classroom designed to be a welcoming and inviting place. It is a safe and comforting space by design, inspired by Benton’s childhood experience.
Many children who visit the bookmobile have no experience with the library or with books. They do not have books at home and reading is not part of their lives. Helping children become familiar and comfortable with reading is part of what the bookmobile does.
More information on the bookmobile is available at: https://www.cityoflompoc.com/government/departments/library/-fsiteid-1.
For more about the Lompoc Public Library System locations, hours and programming, visit cityoflompoc.com/library.
— Samantha Scroggin for the city of Lompoc.