Whether you’ve done a Read to Them program for several years or if 2025 is when your inaugural program launches, you likely have questions about how it all works. We at Read to Them wanted to take the time to answer some of the questions we receive most frequently by guiding you through the step-by-step process of how your program works.
Choose Your Program:
There are several avenues to bring a family literacy program to your school. Be it with One School, One Book, where one school has all the fun, or One District, One Book, where an entire school district dives into a book together. If you live in Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Texas, or Virginia, you may want to consider a States Read One Book program. With the latter, your title and program date is selected by Read to Them to save you and your staff precious planning time.
Select Title:
Once you’ve determined which program is the best fit for your school community, you’ll want to visit our Browse Titles page. Here, you’ll find 159 titles – and counting! – along with 41 of those titles available in Spanish. (You can view our full booklist here.) We have categorized our titles by a number of factors: age of audience, length of program, availability in Spanish, and if a book has a Picture Book Companion. We’ve also sorted our titles according to the different themes they contain, such as acceptance, friendship, resilience, and teamwork, among others. By using the sort and filter function, you are sure to find the title that best suits your school’s needs.
Still having trouble? Don’t hesitate to reach out to one of the members of our Outreach team at programs@readtothem.org. They are more than happy to help you through the book selection process!
Request Quote:
You can request a quote for up to three different books. You can add a book to your quote on the Browse Titles page by hovering over the book cover, or by clicking the title and clicking the “Add to Quote” button on the page’s left side. Our Operations team will get back to you as soon as possible with pricing information – and truly get you on the road to launching your program.
Explore Resources:
Now is when the real fun begins! As you wait for your books to arrive, you’ll also have access to your title’s Book Resource Page through your school’s Client Portal. This is where all of your resource materials live to carry you through all stages of your program. One of the most essential steps to planning a successful program is to familiarize yourself with these materials. Getting the jump on this can allow your school to fold in more events to your program, like a kick-off assembly (that you can use an Assembly Script for) or a Family Literacy Night to conclude your program. You’ll even find tips and tricks to involving your community in the read, and an advanced heads up for those folks could make all the difference.
It should be noted that every school has one set of login credentials; sharing the login credentials with your classroom teachers allows them to go in and download the materials they’d like to use in their classrooms. Allowing them to dive into the resources as early as possible can help with advanced lesson planning and with putting together any take-home materials for families.
If you’d like to watch the video we provide to all of our participating schools to help them navigate their Book Resource Page, click the image below.
Receive Books:
One of the biggest misconceptions about Read to Them is that we ship the books ourselves, but we are not a warehouse. When you place an order for books, we order them from the publisher and the publisher ships them to your school. (We’re also not responsible for shipping delays as we can’t control UPS or the USPS no matter how much we’d like to!) When your books arrive, please be sure to count them and ensure you have the number you ordered. Doing this as soon as possible will give us time to solve any unanticipated issues.
Program Kickoff!
Now’s the time to launch your reading program! The options for kick-off are endless, and are a great opportunity to set the tone for the span of your program. Be sure to tag us on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook at @readtothem to show us the results of all your hard work!
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Still have questions for us? Leave them in the comments below. Happy reading!
