Busload of Books - Inspiring Kids in Albuquerque Schools

Mission Avenue Elementary School last month partnered with the Busload of Books initiative, run by author Matthew Swanson and illustrator Robbi Behr, to give kids an opportunity to connect with the books they were reading.

“We were one of the 12 schools in the nation that won this amazing opportunity,” said Dawnielle Rodriguez, a pre-K teacher at Mission Avenue Elementary.

The Busload of Books initiative donates books, written by Swanson and Behr, to every student at a selected Title I school. The students then get the chance to meet the couple in person or online to learn more about being an author or illustrator.

“The students were so excited that they already had that book, so that they could say, ‘Oh, I saw that in the story,’ and the teachers had the copies with them, and it was really fun,” Rodriguez said.

The goal of the initiative is to see how meeting an author and illustrator impacted the students at the school. The Busload of Books research team surveys the teachers and the school before and after the visit.

“Their initiative is to see how these author and illustrator visits enhance children’s view on reading, writing, creativity, and if it gets them a little bit more excited for reading and writing, and illustrating,” Rodriguez said.

The students at Mission Avenue received copies of “Everywhere, Wonder” for the pre-K through second graders, and “Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie of Doom” for the third to fifth graders. The students visited with Swanson and Behr in two virtual assemblies, one for the younger grades and one for the older grades.

In the assembly, students heard about the pair’s jobs, saw their at-home work spaces, read parts of the stories and drew animals with Behr. The author and illustrator also met with a small group of students picked by teachers.

“This (group) was my favorite because these students got to have some one-on-one time, and because these kids were selected for those attributes they were so invested and so engaged, it literally warmed my heart,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez submitted her school as a good fit for the program after hearing about it on First Book, and subsequently organized the visit between Busload of Books and Mission Avenue.

“There are so many little things that these low-income, or Title I, school children, families, communities, will never experience,” Rodriguez said, “and I truly feel as an educator, as a teacher, as someone who loves kids and loves books, this is such an amazing opportunity for them to get a chance to do something they might not ever get the opportunity to do.”