a city reader

The rural town I grew up in had only 2,000 people, so the Catholic grammar school I went to right across the street from my house (from my 8th grade classroom window I could see my mother hanging clothes on the line) was small. Some rooms had two grades. We didn’t have a real gym. No backboards to play basketball. We had nuns who I didn’t love or hate. Some years we had to take our lunch. I had a Roy Rogers lunch box. There was a big newer public school on the edge of town that kids from neighboring little towns came by bus to. They not only had a gym, they had a pool. I had some friends who went there. One friend was two years older than me. He was a great athlete. He hit home runs over the fence in Little League. We were on the same team. He also read a lot. That fascinated me. He had books in his room. Paperbacks that he got at school. They were his, not library books. They were from a Scholastic book club. I’d never even heard of such a thing. The books looked cool to me. They meant a lot to him it seemed. I envied him going to public school where he got such books. 

I was thinking about book clubs this morning when I read in the paper that maybe school kids in the city will have to stay home and do more remote learning, more online school, if the schools here aren’t in shape for them. What about the kids who don’t read well? How will they practice reading? How will they find a book that might turn them on to reading? The libraries are not really open yet. They need books from those Scholastic book clubs. I wonder if anyone is giving them that opportunity. I wonder if any rich guys or any foundations are paying for kids to get books to read from those clubs.