Studies say that children in poor families hear 30 million fewer words when their brains are developing for life. Reading Is Fundamental says two-thirds of kids in poverty have zero books at home. With generous support like this, we can fix that today, and with more than 7,000 titles in the U.S. alone for every age, interest, professional aspiration, and language, magazines and comics are the most powerful literacy engines on the planet.
We are forever grateful to the generous kindred spirits who have stepped up and joined together to meet the logistical challenges of moving large available supplies of precious magazines into the eager hands and homes of at-risk readers. This time, it begins with the magazine staff at the National Wildlife Foundation who gifted the Zoobie publications, then the Quad logistics team who never flinch at picking up and delivering truckloads of thousand-pound pallets into our literacy distribution pipeline, and the unstoppable volunteers who lead and support our Madison Wisconsin team. We are blessed with this and so much selfless support from so many publishing industry, consumer, and individual literacy champions, coast to coast and around the world.
This gift of tens of thousands, and the sometimes hundreds of thousands of magazines we receive for parents reading to their infants and children, like a recent gift from Cricket Media, and many truckloads of magazines from Highlights for Children, and others, means we will touch that many families, and many more than twice or triple the number of children – many who have zero books at home.
The positive impact on readers is greatest with children whose brains are developing rapidly and because their good reading habits are getting set for life. At the same time, the need for reading materials far outstrips our current supply and handling capacity, and our available supplies for young readers are always especially thin. So, the generous supplies we receive from publishers, and the logistics support, and literally all the heavy lifting is having a vital magnified impact that is changing lives and changing the world for good. Thank you.