Dave Barry is Not Taking Illiteracy Sitting Down!
When humorist Dave Barry (at right) was on tour with the Rock Bottom Remainders (a band made up of authors like Amy Tan and Roy Blount Jr.), he couldn't read a goodnight story to his daughter Sophie. She was 1,200 miles away in Miami while he was playing sold-out concerts in towns like Philadelphia and Boston. But as Barry was attempting to strum the right chords on lead guitar ("In addition to having no talent, I don't practice," he told Tonic), he was making it possible for someone else's family to have that bedtime story: One hundred thousand dollars of the Wordstock Tour's profits went to buy books for Haitian children through We Give Books and World Vision.
We Give Books is a groovy, new idea from the Pearson Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the media company responsible for the Financial Times and the Penguin Group. What it does is simple. Read a book online to your child and Pearson will donate (through one of its literacy partners) another novel to a kid who's less fortunate. No money is required and you can choose your own cause. Currently, Pearson partners with seven nonprofits such as Room to Read, whose goal is to stock 2,000 books on South African 
library shelves, and World Vision's Haiti Learning Spaces, a program vowing to give 5,000 books to a nation ravaged by an earthquake. To date, the program has dished out more than 4,500 tomes.
"Lots of programs are designed to get kids to read but not to give," Barry said. "Every parent — I'm a parent — wants that kind of quality in a kid. The Rock Bottom Remainders have done a lot of work with literacy but I've never seen anything like this."
We Give Books was the brainchild of Pearson Foundation President and Executive Director Mark Nieker (below, right). He's overseen Jumpstart's Read for the Record for a number of years and in 2009, got 2.2 million people to read Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar at the same time.
"In doing these events, it's like a big birthday party and then it's over," Nieker said.
He created We Give Books as a permanent literacy solution. Just launched last week, the site will be up forever if Nieker gets his way.
"Our goal is to give away 1 million books in one calendar year," he said. "We Give Books is just that. We give books. We've made it really easy to give for people who have the time and the inclination and it gets great nonprofits front and center. Maybe people will take an interest in one of them and start a dialogue without our knowing."
Well, what are you waiting for? Visit We Give Books and open a conversation with your child about literacy and giving. While Barry's most recent book I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood won't be available for you to peruse (only titles suitable for kids 10 and younger), The Little Engine That Could is. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can! Good advice for a burgeoning nonprofit.
Photo by Daniel Portnoy via We Give Books, logo courtesy of We Give Books, photo courtesy of the Pearson Foundation.
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