In the wake of pandemic interruptions, and in the face of a contentious climate around book banning, providing young people with access to books and authors has never been more urgent. PW checked in with two literacy organizations that are working to make sure kids and teens everywhere receive the books and encouragement they need to become successful students and enthusiastic readers.
Operation Literacy
Like many writers, Utah-based author Jennifer Jenkins found camaraderie and support when she joined a local writers group to learn more about building a platform for her work. What she hadn’t imagined, however, was that the crew would become the core of something much bigger. In 2009, Jenkins and four like-minded writers in her tightknit group—Lois Brown, Margie Jordan, Jo Layton, and Tahsha Wilson—cofounded a nonprofit organization called Writers Cubed, now known as Operation Literacy, with the goal of helping aspiring teen writers to develop the skills to tell their own stories.
“We all live in close proximity to each other, and we had an interest in serving our community,” Jenkins says. “The original idea was that maybe we should sponsor a writing contest for teens through the high school. We pondered that approach, and, looking back, I can’t believe I had the audacity to think we could do something even better.” Jenkins’s confidence led her to contact nearby Utah Valley University about teaming up. “I walked into their community education department and said, ‘You need us,’ ” she says with a laugh, recalling her pitch to develop a conference for teen writers. “Our motivation was nothing other than we all wish we had had something that would have supported our writing when we were younger. There are so many camps and clinics for athletes, for kids to express themselves in that way. But there are very few opportunities that provide community for young writers and artists.”
To Jenkins’s surprise, UVU was on board with the collaboration. “I can’t believe they said yes,” she says. Jenkins and her fellow authors shifted into high gear pulling everything together, and their Teen Author Boot Camp debuted in 2011 on the UVU campus, with 135 kids from surrounding cities attending. “We had great support from some awesome local authors, and it was wonderful,” she says. “Then, that idea grew. Once you dip your toe into the world of serving outside yourself, it’s kind of addictive, to be honest. We saw how grateful the kids were for what we had offered, and how when they walked into the room it was like they had found their people, their community,” she says. “It was just magical.”
The conference has increased in size each year, according to Jenkins. The event outgrew UVU’s facilities several years back when it hit 800 attendees, and TABC now draws roughly 1,000 teen writers in person at the Utah Valley Convention Center in Provo, with additional teens across the country and internationally attending virtually. This year, the 13th annual Teen Author Boot Camp, with the theme “Gathering the Magic,” is set for March 23, featuring Christopher Paolini and Darcie Little Badger as keynote speakers.
As its flagship conference expanded, so did the scope of Writers Cubed. Jenkins stepped into the role of executive director for the group and formed partnerships with nearby bookstore The King’s English and Owl Hollow Press (which publishes an annual anthology of teen writing from TABC). She and her cofounders also leaned into learning how to fundraise, apply for grants, and meet the various business needs of the burgeoning organization. “The amount of work it takes to lift something like this off the ground is not inconsequential,” Jenkins says.
With TABC steadily drawing more interest, the Writers Cubed team saw an opportunity to embrace younger kids and give them a conference of their own. In 2016, the Tween Author Boot Camp for aspiring writers ages nine to 12 was born. The half-day event is held in Provo in November and includes a First Paragraph contest in addition to activities and workshops with authors.
Once Tween Author Boot Camp was established, Jenkins says that Writers Cubed began requesting that participating authors give the nonprofit the rights to record and distribute their TABC presentations. The result is the TABC Classroom arm of the organization, now a database of nearly 100 curated videos offered to educators to help them teach writing. “We incentivize this program for Title 1 schools,” Jenkins says. “In other words, we give it away. Even though we work with sponsors and donors to provide scholarships for about 10% of our conference attendees every year, there are still so many students who just can’t afford what we are offering. TABC Classroom helps broaden that net.” To accompany each video, Writers Cubed hired professional educators to create lesson plans that align with the national Common Core standards.
An energizing era
The Covid era of shutdowns and disruptions turned out to be a time of still more expansion for Writers Cubed, a development that recently prompted the group to change its name to Operation Literacy. “The program that I’m most proud of, the one that is closest to my heart, is a new one called Book Drop, which we started in collaboration with author Jennifer Nielsen,” Jenkins says. “Jen and I are good friends, and when we first met at a writers conference, we realized that we had both been sitting on the same idea: that we wanted to reach kids from Title 1 schools, providing free books and author visits to them.”
But she notes that this plan comes with some key challenges. “As authors, we’re part of a business,” Jenkins says. “When my publishers send me to do a book tour, they go to schools that can either pay my honorarium or that will reach a minimum book sale quota. But right now in our country, 63% of people live at or below the poverty line, and the children in those homes do not own a single age-appropriate book.” Book Drop is a way to reach more of those kids and their schools. “We bring in major authors to some of the poorest schools across the country and we provide a free author visit and free access to books,” she explains. “And the kids at these Book Drops don’t know until the assembly ends and the author tells them that they all get a free book. The reactions are amazing.”
The most recent Book Drop, on January 19, featured Christopher Paolini, who visited Orem Junior High and presented the 900 students attending his program with free signed copies of his book Eragon. Author Brandon Sanderson’s Lightweaver Foundation funded that event. On the same day, authors Brandon Mull and Frank Cole did a Book Drop assembly and giveaway at Northlake Elementary in Tooele, Utah, bringing the total number of kids receiving free books to 1,350. In 2023, Book Drop reached 10,572 children living at or below the poverty line.
Jenkins says that Operation Literacy pays attention to three metrics when selecting a school to receive a Book Drop: the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, state test scores and how they are trending, and the school’s English-language-learner population. “The funds we get from sponsors and donors are precious, and we have to be careful that we are using them in the schools that need them most.” As an example, she points to a 2021 Book Drop featuring Newbery Medalist Matt de la Peña, who gave a bilingual presentation at Guadalupe School in Salt Lake City, where 97% of the students were English learners, and where kids received free copies of his picture book Last Stop on Market Street.
For a typical Book Drop program, participating authors donate their time, speaking fee, and travel expenses, and Operation Literacy purchases their books with money from sponsors and donations. But Jenkins notes that some authors have stepped up to additionally fund an entire Book Drop. The program reaches beyond Utah as well. “We work with anybody who has a desire to elevate literacy in their city,” Jenkins says. “We go wherever we can get funding.”
Other recent additions to Operation Literacy’s programming slate include Teen Poet Society, a national group that has quarterly readings and annually publishes a teen poetry collection, and the Teen Readers’ Choice Awards, which invites teens to nominate their favorite books of the past two years in seven different categories and then vote on finalists and ultimately decide the winners. An awards gala where the winners are announced takes place on the eve of Teen Author Book Camp—this year it’s March 22.
Looking ahead, Jenkins envisions growth for all the endeavors under Operation Literacy’s umbrella. And there is a larger team in place to help achieve that goal. “We are spread across four time zones,” Jenkins says of the now 26-person staff, which includes the core group of cofounders, who are also executive board members, and Nielsen, who is the founding director of Book Drop. “We’re a modern organization that lives on Zoom,” Jenkins adds. “We love TABC weekend, because that’s when all of our staff comes into town and we get to reunite.”
Writers and Artists Across the Country
Many people had varying reactions to the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, but for literary agent Sarah Burnes and YA author and Blackstone senior acquisitions editor Daniel Ehrenhaft, that point in time sparked the idea to launch a nonprofit. “The weekend after the election, Sarah and I were at YALLFest [in South Carolina] with Tori Hill, the festival’s organizer and author coordinator at the time, and there was a pervasive sense of urgency—to get involved civically somehow, to do something,” Ehrenhaft says. “All the attendees kept asking each other, ‘How can we make a difference?’ The festival itself was the initial inspiration for Sarah and me; we witnessed firsthand the magic that happens when young readers meet and interact with their favorite authors face-to-face. We figured if we could create a similar experience at under-resourced schools—well-resourced schools often have authors come to visit and didn’t need our help—we could make a difference.”
With that, Writers and Artists Across the Country began to crystalize, taking the first steps toward its stated mission as “a consortium of children’s books industry professionals who are building a nationwide network to facilitate author and artist visits in underserved schools.”
The group stipulated that a key component of the organization would be providing a book for each child who attended a WAAC visit. “We felt strongly that students should get books to take home with them as opposed to providing a classroom or library set,” Ehrenhaft says.
WAAC surveyed educators from participating schools at the beginning of this year to gauge how the program is performing. Responses revealed that after a WAAC visit, 100% of educators said students had an increased excitement about books, 89% said students had an increased interest in writing and sharing their own stories, and 73% said the book their students received from WAAC was the first book some of the students had ever owned.
Visits are typically initiated by requests from authors, educators, and local school organizations who ask WAAC to help them connect with each other, purchase books, and figure out the logistics of an event. Examples of individual scenarios abound. Local nonprofits work together with WAAC, too, for added support. One project in the works is WAAC’s fundraising effort with Maine nonprofit I’m Your Neighbor Books so it can expand author-illustrator Omar Mohammed’s tour in the state and reach 1,000 more students.
When it comes to planning where authors will visit, the team says that schools with the greatest barriers to entry—rural, low-income, serving a demographic now represented by many authors—are prioritized. WAAC has a current roster of 150 authors it can draw from, and it additionally works with We Need Diverse Books and individual publishers to connect with other authors who may want to participate.
WAAC is funded solely by donations, with some of those contributions coming from publishing industry professionals or from authors, who offer to donate their time or defray the costs of a visit in some other way. But the WAAC team pointed out that in the organization’s early days, a board member raised the issue that BIPOC authors are often disproportionately asked to do school visits for free, so, WAAC offers an honorarium when they think it’s appropriate.
Since its launch, WAAC has teamed with communities in 40 cities in 17 states. The number of students WAAC has reached—and books it has given away—has doubled each year for the past three years, according to Ehrenhaft, and the goal in 2024 is to reach 10,000 students. The WAAC team states that other milestones in its sights include expanding the donor base to include institutional giving from foundations and corporate sponsors. “That would go a long way toward making our work even more far-reaching and sustainable,” Ehrenhaft says.
Read more from our School And Library Spotlight feature:
Writers and Artists Across the Country
Two authors discuss their experience doing school visits through the nationwide literacy nonprofit.
