What is Books For Keeps?
RAWK’s Books For Keeps program aims to provide access to brand new, culturally relevant and responsible books to support youth and their families in building robust and diverse at-home libraries with the intent of cultivating a community of literacy.
When selecting titles for Books For Keeps distributions, RAWK follows the guiding light of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s idea of Mirrors, Windows, and SIiding Glass Doors –
“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in the reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often see their mirrors in books.”
Click here to see the titles we distributed in the 2025–2026 school year.
The Power of Home Libraries
Many studies and researchers underscore the impact of home libraries:
- Students with more books at home have higher educational attainment (Evans et al., 2010).
- Children growing up in homes with many books go on to receive, on average, three years more schooling than children from bookless homes, regardless of their parents’ education, occupation, and economic status (Evans et al., 2010).
- When students have access to a larger number of books in their home, their reading motivation is higher, their attitude toward reading is more positive, and reading competence increases ( Gambrell, 2011; Katzir et al., 2009; Merga, 2015; Park, 2008; Retelsdorf et al., 2011; Sutter & Campbell, 2022; Zucker et al., 2022).
Our In-School Book Distributions
Throughout the school year, we distribute books to every single youth in the schools where our RAWK Readers’ Rooms operate – Lincoln, Northeastern, and Washington elementary schools. For the past three years, we have offered all-school distributions three times a year – before Winter break, before Spring break, and before Summer break.
Youth are invited to select a book from a variety of specially curated titles with a range of topics, genres, and representation. During each of these distributions, we hand out over 800 books, with an aim to distribute about 2500 books per school year.
How the Youth Feel
In a survey we administered at the beginning of 2026, 246 out of 330 youth proclaimed they want more books from us!
How You Can Help
Your financial support will help us to maintain these distributions and to expand our Books For Keeps program to reach further out into the Kalamazoo community!
We are fortunate to work with First Book Marketplace, where we can access high-quality books at steep discounts. In the three schools we work with, there are 35 classrooms. We spend about $40 on average for a class of 25.
Every dollar counts, but for your donation of just $40, you can make sure a whole classroom of students receives a brand new book!
Please click below to make a donation directly to our Books For Keeps program
