In the creative days of pandemic learning, LINC’s Ellen Auer was something like a book fairy.

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Throughout the city, reading advocates like LINC partners Turn the Page KC and First Book are inventing ways to get essential books into the hands of children and support to their parents and guardians.

For Auer, her Tinkerbell tactic was to take boxfuls of books that were meant to be prizes at a now-canceled spring reading event at Kansas City’s Whittier Elementary and instead sprinkle them out door-to-door.

Following a path charted by the addresses of her after-school program families, she left a stash at each door with personal notes to her kids. Some never saw her. Others caught a glimpse through the front window. A smile and a wave.

And more than once, as she crossed the yard back to her waiting car, she heard kid voices behind her:

“Was that Ms. Auer?”

LINC has been collaborating with Turn the Page KC, First Book and Andrews McMeel Universal in the overarching mission of the Campaign for Grade Level Reading to promote the education success of Kansas City children.

Together, hundreds of thousands of books have been distributed over the years. And this year the partnership was well on its way toward another 40,000 books — when the pandemic did more than just change everything.

It heightened the stakes.

Inequities in the educational resources and supports children have at home are starker than ever now that schools are closed.

“That is why Turn the Page KC has been so aggressive about providing families with books, learning packets and access to other resources for parents,” said Mike English, executive director.

When schools were in session, Turn the Page and LINC were using a $73,000 grant to distribute inclusive, age-appropriate books to school libraries in Kansas City Public Schools, charter schools and the Hickman Mills and Center school districts, and also creating reading events to give books to children to take home.

But once the pandemic forced schools to close, Turn the Page KC prepared packages of books that families could pick up when they came through the schools’ grab-and-go meal distributions.

The concern is particularly strong with elementary age children, who might not be as able to self-motivate themselves to school plans as secondary students.

Younger children “rely more on adults and physical books to prompt their learning,” English said. “Engaging books are the spark.”

Nationally, First Book hopes during the pandemic to distribute 8 million free books, all donated by publishers, throughout its network of some 475,000 members, including schools in low-income communities, early childhood programs and libraries.

All the factors that hinder education success — like the summer slide when school is out, low attendance when school is in, and lack of access to books and support at home — tend to fall harder on low-income families.

And the impact of the pandemic only makes it worse, First Book President and CEO Kyle Zimmer told the New York Times.

“What is challenging for people of means is a crisis for people who don’t have those resources,” she said.

LINC and Turn the Page KC have moved deliberately to draw on First Book’s selection of inclusive children’s books to help Kansas City’s schools build libraries that reflect their diverse enrollment.

LINC site coordinators, including Auer, got to pick books that more closely matched their students’ experience.

“First Book has such wonderfully diverse options that represent the students in our program whose religions and races are often not represented in children’s literature,” Auer said.

Her thoughts were on her students and their families as everyone had to isolate away inside their homes.

“They were missing out on school and friendships, and their families were having to adjust to things too quickly,” she said.

She figured out right away what she was going to do with her boxes of books. She joined the nationwide swell of delivering books — one door, one child, at a time.

By Joe Robertson, LINC Writer