While Cravens Elementary School has undergone renovations, Librarian Jeanine Woods has gotten creative with providing students with books and the opportunity to read.
During a normal year Woods teaches library classes all day, but the renovation caused her to box her books up and do small reading groups in its place. But she said it doesn’t measure up to the normal routine.
“It was killing my soul to not be able for kids to check out books,” Woods said.
To combat this, three days a week she walks through the school with a decorated library cart she calls the ‘Bookmobile cart’ and allows students to check out books. This allowed for Woods to slowly open up the library to students, but then she noticed several students don’t have reading materials outside of the school.
She and Cravens’ administrators started a partnership with Daviess County Public Library to turn the Bookmobile cart into the Bookmobile van and provide reading materials to the students at home once a month.
During September, they started driving the Bookmobile through the neighborhoods, and they served about 160 residents.
“We want to allow them to get those materials for free, and get them excited about reading so we decorated the van and we offer snacks and a drink,” Woods said.
Woods and the Cravens Elementary reading committee said by doing these outreach methods, they can get their students and families excited to read and develop them into lifelong readers.
During the October event, students ran down the street from homes and were able to grab a large stack of books and see some of their teachers while doing so. While Woods and Cravens are giving out books as well, DCPL is handing out books from their library and helping students get plugged in with events and other activities.
Candice Dent, Outreach Coordinator at DCPL, said they plan to do a presentation about the different ways they can continue to read outside of the school building like Hoopla online reading.
Students can use the service to find eBooks and audiobooks with their library cards.
Dent said that she loves giving the children books every month as she has several programs where they also donate books to different places in the community.
The next time the Bookmobile will be heading out into the community will be Nov. 18, though the neighborhoods it will visit have not been decided.
