Read and Rise - Book & Program

Hope you were able to catch the weekend edition of Today’s Saturday morning show. I normally do not have time to watch much television, but had the opportunity this time. A segment that caught my attention was on a book and program called Read and Rise. Author Sandra Pinkney and illustrator Myles Pinkney were being interviewed about the book Read and Rise and how it came about. Unfortunately, I came in on the last part of the interview, so I missed some of the information. The interviewer then introduced a former intern that had been with Scholastic publishing, who spoke about a project he was involved with. The overall objective was for a group of Scholastic interns to come up with a product that would inspire African-American families and their children to learn to read. This is where the Pinkney’s helped pull the interns’ work together and created the Read and Rise book, which includes a foreword by Maya Angelou. The aim of the book according to its creators is to help the African-American family increase their children’s reading and see what can come from reading books.

Upon further review I found that NBC on their website defined the shows’ book piece as part of “A program for parents, family members, and caregivers to help them and their children learn the necessary early literacy and pre-reading skills”. Now the overall program called The Read and Rise Initiative is a partnership between The National Urban League and Scholastic publishing. The National Urban League describes the program as “...specifically for African-American and Latino parents, provides parents with the basic tools for helping children achieve reading success. The initiative is comprised of the Read and Rise Guide, Read and Rise magazine and Reading Room Tips.” Also, Scholastic includes in their Family Matters agenda the ability to download a free copy of the Read and Rise Guide.

Check the book out here.