(SitNews) Ketchikan, Alaska - First Book Southeast Alaska Chair Charlotte Glover announced that First Book Southeast is now accepting grant applications for the 2012-13 school year.

Community organizations that work with low-income children and can incorporate reading into their programs are invited to apply. Past grant recipients have included preschools, daycares, Head Start programs, mentoring programs and after school programs.

First Book-Southeast Alaska is part of First Book’s national network of volunteer led Advisory Boards who provide new books to children in need in communities across the country. First Book-Southeast Alaska works to promote and facilitate the distribution of new books to literacy programs in our region.

Access to books is essential to reading development. However, 60 percent of low-income families have no books for children in their homes. By providing children from low-income homes books they can take home and keep, First Book targets the only variable that correlates significantly with reading scores- the number of books in the home.

First Book Southeast Alaska has been distributing books to programs serving low-income children since April of 2006. Call Charlotte at 225-0370 for more information or to request a grant application. Grant applications are also available at the children’s desk at the Ketchikan Public Library.

On the Web:

First Book
http://www.firstbook.org/

Source of News: 

First City Libraries

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