Teachers who work with English as a Second Language learners will find ESL/ESOL/ELL/EFL reading/writing skill-building children's books, stories, activities, ideas, strategies to help PreK-3, 4-8, and 9-12 students learn to read.
Literacy Organizations & Initiatives
Reading at Home with Your Child
Delta Publishing sells videos, DVDs, and handouts available in English and Spanish for educators to teach parents how to read with their children.
ALA: Every Child Ready to Read
The Public Library Association and the Association for Library Service to Children have incorporated the latest research into a series of parent and caregiver workshops designed to provide public libraries with vital tools to help prepare parents for their critical role as their child's first teacher. These tools were developed by Dr. Grover C. Whitehurst and Dr. Christopher Lonigan, well-known researchers in emergent literacy, and have been tested and refined by library demonstrations sites around the country.
The Américas Award is given in recognition of U.S. works of fiction, poetry, folklore, or selected non-fiction (from picture books to works for young adults) published in the previous year in English or Spanish that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States. The award is sponsored by the national Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP).
America Reads Spanish is an organization whose main goal is to ensure the availability of Spanish language reading materials in schools and libraries nationwide.
Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy
The Barbara Bush Foundation supports literacy efforts across the country where parents and children can learn to read together.
Using Book Adventure, young readers not only receive the intrinsic satisfaction of reading a book and demonstrating their comprehension through short quizzes, but also earn rewards for reading and demonstrating comprehension of the books they've read.
Center for the Book (Library of Congress)
On behalf of books and reading, the Center for the Book serves as an advocate, a catalyst, and a source of ideas — both nationally and internationally. Its major themes and projects are reading and literacy promotion, the role of books and reading in today's society, the international role of books, the recognition and celebration of America's literary heritage, and the history of books and print culture.
Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement, University of Michigan
The model that underlies CIERA's research efforts acknowledges many influences on children's reading acquisition: readers and texts, home and school, and policy and profession. CIERA's task goes beyond finding answers to persistent problems in reading through research to disseminating those solutions to people who impact children's early reading achievement: teachers, teacher educators, parents, policymakers, and others.
The Children's Book Council is a non-profit trade organization dedicated to encouraging literacy and the use and enjoyment of children's books since 1945. The CBC sponsors Young People's Poetry Week and National Children's Book Week each year.
Connecticut Family Learning Initiative
The CT State Department of Education's Family Literacy Initiative works to expand, strengthen and coordinate family literacy services in the state. Family literacy publications and resources are available on the program's website, including a family literacy guide in Spanish.
Early Literacy Initiative, University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development trains reading tutors and sends them out to work with children; sharing the expertise of the college's literacy faculty with parents, teachers, and others who work with children; and coordinating other literacy activities.
El Día de los niños/El Día de los libros
This section of Pat Mora's website offers information on how she founded the celebration, as well as updates on how libraries around the country celebrate the holiday each year on April 30th.
Everybody Wins! is a privately-funded non-profit organization devoted to increasing children's prospects for success in school and in life through one-to-one reading experiences. POWER LUNCH is a lunch-time literacy and mentoring program pairing elementary school students with adult volunteers.
This website from PTO Today provides all the information needed to organize a successful Family Reading Night event. You can also request a Family Reading Night Kit, which includes a planning guide, posters, brochures, and many fun creative ideas to use at your event.
First Book is a national nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and to own their first new books. The primary goal of First Book is to work with existing literacy programs to distribute new books to children who, for economic reasons, have little or no access to books.
Get Ready to Read!'s program vision is that all preschool children will have the skills they need to learn to read when they enter school. This site is part of NCLD's initiative to provide parents, educators, health-care professionals, and advocates with tools to help build early literacy skills, including a bilingual early literacy screening tool.
In2Books, the largest nonprofit literacy program in Washington, DC, helps students become successful readers, writers, and thinkers through a combination of challenging work for students and literacy professional development for their teachers.
International Children's Digital Library
This digital library hosts a collection of books from around the world. Ultimately, this organization hopes to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature available from the world community.
National Institute for Literacy (NIFL)
NIFL was created by the National Literacy Act of 1991, when a bipartisan Congressional coalition acted on the literacy field's request for a federal office focused solely on literacy. The Institute serves as a focal point for public and private activities that support the development of high-quality regional, state, and national literacy services.
NRC is a professional organization for individuals who share an interest in research and the dissemination of information about literacy and literacy instruction.
