In Addition to History

Very Hungry Caterpillar and inspired Penguin
to make the edition available in retail stores.
Alison Morris’ office resembles what a
library might look like after an earthquake.
Every couple of feet a new stack of books
sprouts from the floor. The middle row of a
blond wood shelf has collapsed under the
weight of colorful volumes.
And yet, it doesn’t feel chaotic. That might
be because Ms. Morris herself is neat and
organized in her thinking, and has a tidy catalog
of children’s books built in her head. She’s
read almost every text in the room.
As the senior director of First Book’s collection
development and merchandising team,
Ms. Morris is the person who scours through
journals and publisher catalogs. Her goal is to
expand the Marketplace with materials that
speak to the children First Book serves.
Questionnaires and surveys of First Book’s
network have helped paint a picture of those
children. Forty-five percent of respondents
report that the kids they serve face homelessness.
Eighty-three percent say their students
come from single-parent homes. Thirty-two
percent say their kids encounter community
or gang violence. Fifty-four percent report
that the kids they serve have incarcerated
parents or siblings.
Ms. Morris thinks about these things
constantly when she’s introducing new titles
to the Marketplace. She goes to a bookshelf
outside her office and comes back with a
copy of Jacqueline Woodson’s Visiting Day.
The picture book follows a young girl excited
about reuniting with her father, who is in
prison. The story doesn’t dwell on why he’s
incarcerated. Instead, it focuses on the child’s
relationship with her dad and the strength of
their bond.
Another one of her favorite new books is
K.A. Holt’s House Arrest. The novel, written
in verse, describes a young boy’s year on
probation after he uses a stolen credit card to
help his family.
“I don’t think books are intended only for
a certain kind of kid,” she says. “Any kid can
read this and it will help them develop empathy
and help them ponder their sense of right
and wrong.”
But when these books go into the hands of
kids living these experiences, she says, they
become personal.
The idea has continued to drive the organization’s
Stories for All Project. Last year,
the Walt Disney Co. helped First Book distribute
more than 270,000 culturally relevant
David J. Johns (top) reads to a roomful of
kids before asking them to list what they
would accomplish as president (bottom).
books to the Latino community. First Book
also worked with HarperCollins to release
an English and Spanish bilingual edition of
Goodnight Moon.
More recently, working with Target, Jet-
Blue and KPMG, First Book brought to its
Marketplace 60,000 copies of six more books
with diverse characters or plots. Two of those
titles are from authors and illustrators new
to the children’s picture book world: Boats
for Papa, Jessixa Bagley’s story about dealing
with the loss of a parent, and Emmanuel’s
Dream, Laurie Ann Thompson’s true account
of disabled cyclist Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah.
Four were existing titles made available in
exclusive paperback editions, including And
Tango Makes Three about a same-sex family,
and Niño Wrestles the World about a little
lucha libre fighter.
In February, the White House, First Book,
the New York Public Library, publishers and
other libraries launched an effort to provide
access to $250 million worth of e-books for
free to children from low-income families.
And this spring, the Library of Congress
recognized First Book with its $150,000
David M. Rubenstein Prize, part of the
library’s annual Literacy Awards.
Still, lofty goals remain. Ms. Zimmer says
the market-driven strategies for the Stories
for All Project will continue to evolve, and
that First Book is expanding its presence
in Canada and the United States, aiming to
reach “every educator who needs us and every
child who needs us.” First Book also has small
pilot projects in 19 countries to figure out how
it can scale its distribution internationally.
On a Monday morning in February, lopsided
lines of elementary school kids file into
the Department of Education’s auditorium. It
isn’t the sterile government building room
you might imagine; the lighting is bright and
the carpets are colorful and playful. There’s
music. The floor is decked out with a couple of
football-shaped beanbag chairs that the kids
race toward excitedly.
Five inner-city D.C. schools have been
invited here for a Black History Month celebration
hosted by First Book and the White
House Initiative on Educational Excellence
for African Americans. The White House
initiative has planned a couple of empowerment
activities for the kids, and then First
Book will give every child a hardcover copy of
the anthology Our White House: Looking In,
Looking Out.
A room full of kids spanning grades three
through six might sound like a recipe for
chaos. Yet the students are surprisingly quiet
and attentive. They sit cross-legged watching
little screens blaring videos of YouTube sensation
Kid President.
The initiative’s executive director, David J.
Johns, takes the mic and kicks off the action.
He’s tall and enthusiastic, comfortable talking
to elementary school-aged kids. He’s been a
teacher before, and he’s been spearheading
educational excellence for African American
students since former Education Secretary
Arne Duncan put him in charge of the initiative
in 2013.
He pulls out a copy of Catherine Stier’s If I
Were the President and begins reading it out
loud. The book follows a multicultural cast of
kids imagining what it would be like to lead
the country.
“If I were president,” Mr. Johns reads,
“I’d travel in my own limousine or my private
airplane, Air Force One.” He looks up at the
crowd of students, and they’re hooked. He
decides to intersperse the story with some
trivia.
“Do you guys want to know what the code
name is for the president’s car?” Mr. Johns asks.
Heads bob up and down in unison.
“The Beast,” he whispers, letting everyone
in on the secret. Two boys exchange wideeyed
looks and one repeats the name: “The
Beast!”
When Mr. Johns gets to the last page of the
book, he breaks the kids into groups and gives
them an assignment to come up with a list of
what they would accomplish as president. Students
gather around large sheets of paper to
brainstorm ideas that range from “treat everyone
equal” to “make college free.” After every
group presents its platform, First Book’s staff
begins lining up the kids in front of a massive
table where their free books are waiting.
One by one, Our White House: Looking
In, Looking Out gets placed into every pair of
small hands. Some of the kids are so little they
have to hug the weighty, 250-page hardcover
with both arms.
A few teachers linger in the auditorium,
asking their classes to pose for pictures.
Clusters of students hold up their White
House books before a constellation of flashing
iPhone cameras. They grin up into the lenses,
showing smiles with missing baby teeth. The
phones come down, and a couple kids peel
away from the crowd.
One child plops down in the middle of the
floor and lurches the book onto his lap. He
begins thumbing through it slowly, looking
at illustrations of George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln. He lands on a picture of
the White House.
After a day like today, where he’s spent all
day thinking about what he would do as president,
he might be picturing himself in that
house.
Next to him, a couple of other children
have also stopped to look inside the book. The
room has grown quiet—just a few voices and
the sound of pages turning.
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