See what we're reading, what we're donating, & what we're doing throughout the community this month
A look back at January:
January felt 87 days long. With all our outreach throughout our community, multiple snow days here in Eastern NC, the immense heaviness unloaded after the inauguration, and ending the month with a library learning experience, January was a trial of triumphs and tribulations. We filled our free libraries with books honoring Harlem renaissance creatives, educating the work of lesser known civil rights activists, and celebrating Lunar New Year. We want to say a special thank you to all of you who donated books off of our January wishlists. Each book was donated into our free libraries in our diverse, rural communities. We are so excited that diverse books are finding their way into homes, libraries, & classrooms showcasing a true need throughout our communities for books that are representative of the communities they serve.
Our book clubs: This month we took our MOSS Kids Book Club to five locations (and have rescheduled our sixth location for this upcoming week, darn snow days)!! We discussed what makes us who we are to create a collective poem within our communities. Kids crafted their own mandalas inspired by the beautiful art found within our story on old CDs and records and took home plenty of printable activities to continue their learning. Check out our blog post to grab those printables!
Lunch Bunch: We met up with our local elementary school kids to participate in their Lunch Bunch program. We started a new series -- The Kid's in Mrs. Z's Class -- with the first in the collection, Emma McKenna, Full Out by Kate Messner. Each kid created their own bookmark for this story by drawing self-portraits resembling the photographs of each kid in Mrs. Z's class at the beginning of the book. Emma is entering third-grade (the same grade as our readers) & is struggling to find her footing, as many do. So far, we're enjoying the story & excited to see what animal the children choose as their school mascot. What we love about this series is the interactive prompts included within the text that the kids can participate in alongside our protagonist. We're excited to finish book 1 in Feb & start book 2 of the series!
New Display at Wilson County Public Library: We now have our own display at the Wilson County Public Library based on our monthly MOSS Kids Book Club. There you will find: our monthly book club pick, supplemental titles that align with the book of the month's theme, printable activity/coloring sheets & a QR code to our blog post for that month to participate in the craft if you missed our storytime at the library! We are honored & excited to have a small space to share diverse titles & encourage families to take those specific books out to read together. We're grateful for the opportunity to work with the children's librarians at youth services in Wilson & cannot wait to continue our partnership & see where it takes us in 2025!
El Deafo Donation: This month, 6th grade students at Martin Millennium Academy were gifted a classroom set of the graphic novel, El Deafo by Cece Bell, to read before hearing from the author virtually! El Deafo is a graphic novel that will help students reflect on their own unique experiences and see how embracing differences can fuel creativity, empathy, and strong storytelling. They learned to reframe their personal challenges as strengths while building empathy and connection. Big thanks to BookBreak for providing a unique service to schools so kids can hear from a variety of authors each month via a live stream. MOSS Kids Book Project nominated MMA for the program the 2024-2025 school year.
Picture Books on Tap: We had our biggest turnout this month for our adult picture book club at a local brewery. We read the same book as our MOSS Kids Book Club -- A Little Bit of Everything. We grab our beverages & settle in for a storytime like we're back in elementary school. After reading together, we created mandalas on recycled records and cultivate a collective poem about what each of us in our community is made of. Very proud of the thoughtfulness of the poem created, see the poem inspired by A Little Bit of Everything below:
Library Learning Conference: Kara jetted off to Arizona for an extended weekend to the American Library Association's last LibLearnX to participate in hands-on workshops, bite-size sessions with an emphasis on collaborative learning, and see what upcoming books are on the horizon in children's literature. A few of our future MOSS Kids Book Club picks were spotted. Kara had the incredible opportunity to join fellow children's librarians and literature advocates at a lunch and cocktail hour with Scholastic, where she heard from authors/illustrators on their upcoming releases & was able to met them to get their gifted advanced copies signed. All signed copies will make their way onto our future bookmobile library and mobile youth community center. Kara is now back home fueled with new programing ideas and ways to improve & expand MOSS Kids Book Project's reach.
Story Hour: While Kara was off learning, Kyle and the kids helped host our monthly MOSS Kids Book Club meet up with Drag Story Hour at Boxyard RTP with queen reader mx. Princexx Peritwinkle! Together we read The Snowy Day, Our Pool, & our January book club pick, A Little Bit of Everything. Following storytime, kids designed manadalas on old CDs & took home our printable coloring and activity sheets.
What we're reading:
Our February MOSS Kids Book Club is a little different this month. We've chosen two books by the same author -- Seina Wedlick! We'll be reading The Night Market written by Seina Wedlick and illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu AND Space for Everyone written again by Seina Wedlick and illustrated by Camilla Sucre. The Night Market, filled with vibrant illustrations, invites young readers into a world of magic, mystery, and the joy of finding treasures in unexpected places. While Space for Everyone is a heartwarming story about how difficult it is to move, but how connecting with community makes everything better. We can’t wait to share more about both of these books and the activities we’ve come up with to go along with it, later this week. Check out these supplemental book lists to pair with our February MOSS Kids Book Club picks celebrating outdoor markets & honoring the emotions of having to move.
Every February, & really all year long, we celebrate Black History Month. If you haven’t, this is the perfect opportunity to begin diversifying your bookshelves. It is important to share books about actual Black history. With our federal government choosing to cut DEI programming & choosing not to celebrate & honor Black history, it is more important than ever to bring these books into your homes, onto the shelves of classrooms, & into public libraries. Make sure the books you are reading are Own Voices — books featuring Black characters that are written by Black authors.
While learning & understanding actual history is important, choosing to celebrate & honor Black joy needs to be a priority. We believe as a society we need a reminder that Black history is more than enslavement & the civil rights movement. And that we need to celebrate Black joy too. We're lifting up books that affirm Blackness and empower readers. Discover stories that celebrate Black excellence; are rich with unforgettable characters; delight in heritage and culture; and authentically present the diversity of Black experiences, identities, and ways to experience joy.
We’ve complied a list of our favorite books on LOVE. Something we believe our country could use a little more of right now. Here we’ve featured just a few that we’ve been reading, loving, donating, & gifting. Just our daily reminder to diversify your bookshelves. Books featuring animal characters are great, but, we need to ensure our children are reading books with a diverse array of characters, cultures, backgrounds, & perspectives written and illustrated by diverse creatives. Books that shows love outside of the traditional, binary roles.
We love scanning bookshelves for color-specific books. You can scan your home bookshelves and re-discover a book (or a few) that you haven’t read in a while. Or head to your local library — it’s FREE — & find a few shelves with pink reads. But if you’re like us & don’t love the spontaneity of this, we’ve got your covered with a list of pink-covered books to check out. This is a great activity for when boredom strikes, but you need to prep dinner or the school week has everyone bouncing off the walls overstimulated & you need time to take a deep breath before the nighttime routine. Have your kids scan their shelves & find all the pink books they can. Take a moment to reconnect with your kid(s) after a long day by reading pink hues.
More booklists in February: We’re in the process of making & updating our lists on women in science, books on languages, & our favorite read-aloud stories. Keep an eye out for these lists, which will be featured throughout the month.
What we're donating:
This month we’re filling up our free libraries with brand new titles to celebrate and educate on Black history & Black joy, on love for Valentine's Day, women in science, & books with pink covers. We are extremely grateful for all donations from the community. Even the smallest contributions help us get new books into rural communities where affordable access to diverse books is scarce. Heading into February, we could use your help to restock our Macclesfield library that was vandalized in December. We're repainting & replacing the glass/shelf now. We're waiting on new stickers to come in, but would love help restocking so we can immediately reopen when we're ready! Check out our wishlists & consider donating today. Help us create a better society by raising kind, empathetic, & accepting kids.
What we're doing throughout the community:
Picture Books on Tap, our adult picture book club: Come out to Larema Beverage Company at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, February 12th, to connect with your inner child and your local community through stories, crafts, and great food and drinks! Check out our monthly calendar for a complete list of events.
Book Clubs: We’re continuing to bring MOSS Kids Book Club to our local locations -- four elementary schools across two counties and the Wilson County Public Library. Plus, we're back with Drag Story Hour at Boxyard RTP. We're looking to add another local library & a couple more schools in 2025. We're reading all about finding the magic & mysteries in unexpected places, while honoring the emotions that come with a move.
Lunch Bunch: We started a new book series this month. A chapter book series celebrating different kids in Mrs. Z's class, all from different perspectives & backgrounds. And every book in the series is by a different author! We love spending time with these students and providing a safe space for them to learn and grow as readers. A set will be donated to the school for other Lunch Bunch groups to have access.
World Read Aloud Day: World Read Aloud Day is the first Wednesday in February where we will be making an appearance in classrooms across the Twin Counties. We're bringing our favorite books to make kids laugh & to inspire our youth to dream big, to reach for more! After reading to each classroom, we will be donating the book to the school library. Can't wait to see how many schools we can visit & read to in one day. We even have a special virtual guest attending a Spanish immersion classroom! Stay tuned!
Read with us Rocky Mount's Silent Book Club: With all the incredible work we are doing for children's literacy, we have decided to create an adult bookish community in the twin counties. Read with us Rocky Mount is an in-person group of readers cultivating community, actively working to make time in our schedules to gather and read. We currently host a silent book club at Larema Coffee House in downtown Rocky Mount two Sundays a month. We come together to read silently. In Love & Literature Event: Each month, Read with us Rocky Mount will be hosting a bookish event throughout the community to gather in the name of literature. In February, we will be hosting a Valentine's event. In Love & Literature, where each attendee can bring a book off their shelf that they no longer need to create a blind date with a book. A wrapping station will be available, along with literary pictionary, pizza & mocktails, and a call for children's book donations for our local communities educating our youth about Palestine. Be sure to join our Read with Rocky Mount Facebook group & follow along with @cecchireads on Instagram for more information about upcoming events & adult book recs.
What's coming next:
Events: In March, we're partnering with the city of Rocky Mount to celebrate Creek Week! With the city of Rocky Mount's stormwater engineer, we'll be heading to two local public schools & the Braswell Public Library for a storytime & craft to celebrate NC's creeks, streams, & rivers. We'll also be participating in Read Across America Day with our local school partners. We'll be hosting extra pop-in storytimes for our communities to celebrate & educate holidays in March. Don't forget our second annual MARCH MADNESS book tourney -- who will be our 2025 Nat. Champ?
And on March 8th, MOSS Kids Book Project will be 2!!
Booklists in February: We'll be sharing books celebrating upcoming holidays, including -- Ramadan, Holi, Nowruz, & Eid al-Fitr. We'll also be updating our book lists for women's history month, bedtime reads, sustainability, trans stories, & our favorite green reads. Don't forget to follow along with us on our socials to see what we're doing every week.
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