Mobile book bus to promote reading skills

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – In this colorful bookmobile, a group of children enjoying summer camp were allowed to choose two books to take home Tuesday.

Mahogany Jones is 6 and on cloud nine, especially after finding a book she knows she will love.

“I’ve seen this show before,” Jones said, jumping up and down. “It’s like Sweet Strawberry Cake. I’ve seen it before and I really like people and kittens, so I picked this one.”

The book is called Puppy love is at her reading level, but she also chose a book that challenged herself. It was much thicker and had many more words.

However, one of the goals is not only to put books into the hands of the children of Pinellas County, but also to further improve their reading skills.

“Our campaign, the Pinellas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, aims to get children reading at grade level by age 3.^rd Great. And we’re not quite there yet,” said Brianna Ray, community collaborations coordinator at JWB.

The Summer Book Bus program is operated by the Pinellas County Department of Youth Services.

Pinellas County’s third through 10th grade reading proficiency scores were recently released by the Florida Department of Education. Pinellas scored 56%, which ranks the school 15th in the nation.

By 2025, JWB aims to achieve a proficiency rate of 70% in the third grade.

Daniel Achille, who is in first grade, confidently chose two books.

“A caterpillar,” said Achille when asked about his favorite book. He loves The hungry caterpillar.

By the end of the summer, the bookmobile will have traveled throughout Pinellas County and visited 80 locations.

Around 6,500 children are reached and the goal is to distribute 13,000 books.