StoryBook Treasures

The data shows that illiteracy is an underlying cause of incarceration, homelessness, welfare dependency, and many other barriers people face to living a life of fulfillment. If students are not reading by the end of 3rd grade, they typically never catch up, setting them up for a life of poverty and struggle.

The StoryBook Treasures program model is set up to build confidence and stamina for learning, while also meeting the specific learning needs of academically at-risk children. Through a powerful, all-inclusive turnkey school to home literacy enrichment program for grades Prekindergarten through third, our program is specifically designed to close the literacy achievement gap through reading, story comprehension, and family engagement.

If scaled globally we know we would see an improvement in global literacy rates, students connections to books, and parent engagement.

According to data from the National Institute for Literacy, National Center for Adult Literacy, The Literacy Company, and the U.S. Census Bureau, 85% of juvenile offenders have problems reading. With an average of 1.7M juvenile cases heard annually, that is 1.4M children. Additionally, 3 out of 4 people on welfare can’t read. That is over 44M Americans that are illiterate.  

The SBT program is designed to capitalize on the strength and diversity of each student via a commitment to culturally relevant pedagogy, differentiated instruction and rigor. Therefore, all students participate in the SBT program. SBT’s powerful inclusive approach to literacy impacts all every student. Children spend an entire week speaking “the same literacy language”, learn of one another in engaging conversation and are fully emerged and connected to the same story. SBT provides the framework for advanced thinking based on the premise that all students need the opportunity and exposure to high level thinking; students may not be able to read at a higher level, but they can think at that level. As students transition from learning to read, to reading to learn, SBT provides them an established background and method of thinking and that’s when we see the achievement gap closing and students rising to their greatest learning potential. 

Illiteracy disproportionately impacts students with low-socioeconomic status. These students are considered academically at-risk. The teacher who founded SBT saw firsthand the impact of struggling students within her classroom and community. Through a child’s eyes she saw the difficulties that are present when a child lives in poverty. Their vulnerabilities are raw and create learning obstacles that they struggle with but don’t understand. Many of our countries students begin school each day without the necessary at home resources and stability to build confidence and the stamina for learning. SBT is designed to meet the specific learning needs of these students, all while being delivered by a trusted source – their classroom teacher. Early literacy intervention is critical to academically strengthen these at-risk children.

Illiteracy is the greatest inequity our country's low income youth faces as they attempt to make their way through school and become a member of society. StoryBook Treasures increase the engagement of these at-risk learners, gives the necessary strategies and tools for parental support, and encourage peer interaction and independent work to further the student’s comprehension of the story, differentiate elements of the story, and share personal connections to the story. 

In 2015 SBT launched in two schools serving 211 students. We have experienced rapid growth and expect to distribute over 60,000 books to 12,000 students across 7 states in the 2021-2022 school year. We attribute the unbelievable growth and success to the overall impact on student achievement and family engagement. 

The innovation behind StoryBook Treasures begins with our team of educators who develop the evidence-based program that incorporates teaching methods, establishing a home to school literacy connection, and providing books for home libraries, the key components to increasing literacy scores among disadvantaged and minority students. 

There are many organizations out there offering literacy programming, mostly phonics based how to read programs and programs that promote book giveaways. StoryBook Treasures is not that. We are specifically designed to be complimentary to those programs, instilling a love of reading and emotional connection to books that will stay with that child for life. To date we have not seen another literacy program with that as their core mission.