ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. (CBS12) — Reading rates for elementary students on the Treasure Coast have been climbing in recent years, but one new initiative is hoping to push those rates even higher.
An independent organization is bringing book vending machines to elementary schools in St. Lucie County, giving away about 25,000 books a year. The goal is to get kids excited about reading!
“We’ve created this superhero, Bookman, because we always say that reading is a superpower, has the ability to take you to places you may not have been able to go had you not had a love for reading,” Children’s Services Council of St. Lucie County, CEO, Sean Boyle said.
The goal of this book vending machine is to help kids in low-income families who don’t have reading material at home. “For low-income families, what they found was there was one book for every 300 children. So, if we want to support reading and we want to make sure that children are reading on grade level, we have to make sure that there’s reading material available in their homes,” Boyle said…