When he worked at Mercy Housing’s Sunnydale community center The Hub, Alejandro Buenrostro came to our Book Bank and was “thrilled to get everything we could have wanted to stock libraries in the community center, reading nooks across properties, and families’ personal libraries to promote literacy, education, interest exploration, and family connection.” Now Alejandro volunteers at our Book Bank “to get back in touch with that feeling of wonder and worlds opening up” that children’s books supply. As a child, Alejandro’s parents couldn’t read to him because they’d had to leave school at an early age. He learned to read at school, and says ever since he “loved siloing up in a corner at home, at the school or public library, making a nook to escape into, to enrich yourself while being absorbed in a different world, getting lost in the best of ways. Volunteering at the Children’s Book Project connects me to the wonder and solace that books have always given me. I find meaning being here and spreading book joy in the community.”

“On a late February morning, a group of fourth graders from Moscone Elementary School in the Mission District stepped off a yellow school bus and entered a Bayview warehouse filled with books.” A reporter with independent news site Mission Local visited our Book Bank during a recent Storytime, and shared how the program and the Children’s Book Project works to give free books to kids who need them. Read all about it here!