When Antwan Aiken and his husband Jeremy opened Eggs Up Grill in Morrow last February, they were looking for organizations to partner with to increase their visibility in the community. They started by researching the public library system.
“We … noticed that there were only I think six or seven libraries for the entire county,” Aiken said. “We also noticed that … Clayton County Public Schools is (one of the largest) school district(s) in Georgia. So that disparity just didn’t make sense.”
They realized they were in a book desert, Aiken said. Somewhat serendipitously, Shavawn Simmons walked into the restaurant one day.
Simmons founded a nonprofit called Family Literacy of Georgia and was bringing a new reading program, Read in Color, to the state. She was looking for partners as well. Read in Color, an initiative that distributes books with diverse characters and authors through Little Free Libraries, began in Minneapolis shortly after George Floyd died at the hands of police officers in May of 2020.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Eggs Up eagerly jumped on board. Simmons, a retired Clayton County educator, was excited about the opportunity to place Little Free Libraries in communities of color. Simmons has also partnered with other organizations across the state — stretching the program from Columbus to Gainesville to Savannah.
Family Literacy of Georgia uses grants to pay for the books and libraries, which are free to the organizations served. Each library comes with 300 books, which typically lasts about a year, Simmons said. She chooses books that represent the community where the library is placed. Organizations can decide whether they want to operate as a true library — where books are returned — or as more of a giveaway.
“I can now have a way to operationalize increasing and combating book deserts,” Simmons said. “That made (Family Literacy of Georgia) something I could leverage as a grassroots organization. It’s easy now to explain what we do because we have a visual and this is something that I can ... sell easily and … impact my community quickly.”
Brandy Tolbert, the executive director of the Literacy Alliance nonprofit in Columbus, has received four Read in Color libraries through the program. Her organization works with the Muscogee County School District to help families build literacy. Eighty percent of students in the school district are nonwhite.
“Not only (are) there book deserts, but (we need) books where our families and children can see themselves in the books,” Tolbert said. “So I’m really excited about this initiative, because … it just adds more value and brings more access to our community.”
Another component of Read in Color is that some book characters and authors are not only people of color but also immigrants. That’s made a difference in places that serve families who are trying to adjust to life in a new country and learn a new language. One such place is Hall County, northeast of Atlanta.
Vanesa Sarazua used to oversee the migrant education program in Hall’s public schools. There, she worked with families who couldn’t afford necessities, let alone books. When she founded the Hispanic Alliance of Georgia in 2016, Sarazua wanted to focus on helping families access literature in addition to needs like food and housing. So she reached out to Simmons and received a Read in Color library.
An experience she had with a little girl who had recently arrived from Guatemala reinforced the importance of the program.
“I was reading to her while her parents were enrolling her in school and she was kissing the pages of the book,” Sarazua said. “I knew for sure she had never seen a book or had someone read to her.”
Sarazua said many children she works with are in similar situations. But she said it’s easier to interest a child in a book when they can relate to the characters and storyline.
“It’s just so comforting to know that you’re not the only one who calls your grandpa ‘abuelo,’ for example, or that other people … drink champurrado (Mexican hot chocolate) or that have piñatas or celebrate the holidays like you do,” she said.
Read in Color also stretches down to the coast of Georgia to the Savannah-Chatham County School District. Rebekah Hein is the school system’s Innovative Approaches to Literacy teacher specialist. It’s a federally funded position focused on building literacy in areas of need. She has received four Read in Color libraries for her students, some of whom speak languages other than English at home.
It’s not lost on her that as the Read in Color program grows, some school districts across the country are reviewing and removing books from library shelves. Many banned books are written by diverse authors or feature diverse protagonists. Hein isn’t a fan of that tactic.
“Something I hear from a lot of educators I admire (is): You as the parent … have every right to decide what your child reads, but you don’t get to dictate what another family decides is OK for their child,” she said.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Back at the Eggs Up Grill in Morrow, Antwan Aiken feels the same way. He points out that he relies on his employees — from cooks to servers to dishwashers — to be able to read well.
“To restrict reading access and (to) restrict certain books — regardless of what information is in it — I just don’t think that that’s something that I agree with,” he said. “I think that critical reading is different ideas and different opinions, and I think that that’s always a positive thing.”
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