Book'em

Mission: Book’em creates a more literate Nashville and ignites children’s passion for reading through book ownership and enthusiastic volunteers.

Vision: Book’em envisions a future in Nashville where all children own books and know first-hand the joy and value of reading.

About Book’em

Book’em is a local, nonprofit, children’s literacy organization founded in 1989 in Nashville, TN. The organization fulfills our mission by making children and teens proud owners of new books and bringing volunteer readers into the classrooms of underserved preschool and elementary aged children. 

Our highest priority is serving Nashville’s disadvantaged children during their preschool and elementary school years.  We believe that developing strong literacy skills from an early age is essential for academic and lifelong success.  Book’em provides vital resources, so that Nashville’s underserved children can build their literacy skills.  Programs include Books for Nashville’s Kids, Reading Is Fundamental and Ready for Reading.  For more information, please visit www.bookem-kids.org.

Values

• A single book for a single child makes a difference.
• Our board and staff are actively committed to our mission.
• Donors of books, time and money are essential to our mission.
• Efficiency will best meet our mission.
• Working with others in the community makes us better.

Tagline

Bringing Kids and Books Together.

What is our scope?

• What kinds of customers/clients do we serve? low-income youth; ages 0 through 18
• What programs/services do we provide to those customers? book distribution and reading role model volunteers (not tutors)
• Where do we provide our programs/services? Davidson County, TN only; through public elementary schools primarily, as well as preschools, government agencies, other nonprofits, middle and high schools, faith-based organizations, and more

Reading Is Fundamental (RIF): a reading volunteer visits their assigned elementary classroom 5 times a year, spends 30 minutes in the classroom reading aloud, engaging with the students as a class, and helping students (and teacher) each pick out a new book for themselves (teacher for classroom library). During 2018-19, 4,288 students in 213 classes at 17 Metro Nashville Public Schools took home 21,443 books through this program. Teachers added 1,038 books to their classroom libraries. Volunteers donated 1,406 hours and made 1,038 visits.

Ready for Reading (RFR): Book'em provides a classroom reading volunteer for each classroom at Cambridge and Ross Early Learning Centers, which provide Pre-K for 4 year-olds. The volunteer visits once a week for about 30 minutes. We also give the ELCs books from our Books for Nashville’s Kids program.

Books for Nashville's Kids (BFNK) - schools, government agencies, after-school programs, nonprofits, summer programs, festivals, etc., that serve primarily low-income families in Davidson County can request books from Book'em to give to the youth (ages 0-18) they serve to take home as their own. Groups can request one book/young person, three times/year. They are free as long as we have books available and the group follows our guidelines. Most of these books are donated to Book’em from book drives, individuals, publishers and more. In 2019, Book’em distributed more than 96,000 books.

Read Me Day (RMD) Celebrations – each year Book’em works with one or more elementary schools to celebrate reading. Community members are invited to the school for a school-wide assembly program, then to read to students in each classroom. Students also get to select books to take home. In 2020, we coordinated 4 celebrations.