The Mlodzik Grow Your Library Challenge 2019

Anticipation! Giggles! While waiting outside a library? Seeing almost 50 kids along with parents and grandparents lined up outside a public library on a Saturday morning anxiously awaiting the doors to open and story time to begin in Show Low, AZ was such a heartwarming sight.

Tina and I are asking for your financial help to put more books in the hands of disadvantaged youth. We travel to communities with some of the highest poverty in their respective states. Often 100% poverty.  On behalf of Kids Need to Read, we plan to visit six public libraries during 2020. Located in economically challenged communities of Kansas, Nebraska, California, Alaska and Arizona, each library will receive 300–400 new books and a story time event, where each child will take home their own new book and Highlights magazine. For the children who attend these events, getting these free materials makes for wide eyes and smiles.

This is the sixth year of our fundraising challenge, and Tina and I will again match 25% of your donations up to a total of $4,000. Please make a donation to Kids Need to Read through the link on this page. With your help, we hope to keep this program growing strong for the future of kids all over the USA. A $25 donation will ship one box of books. $250 will pay for shipping 300 books to most libraries.

Your donations will buy books to give to the children, pay shipping costs to get boxes of books to the libraries, purchase packing materials, book plates, shelving for inventory—whatever Kids Need to Read needs to keep the Grow Your Library program flourishing. 

Thank you for your consideration and continued support.

More information about the Grow Your Library program.

 “It was nice to receive so many wonderful new books for the library, of course, but we really enjoyed the personal touch that Gary and Tina add to the program. Also, it was especially nice for the children to be able to meet an actual author and an illustrator, Tom and Lindy Schneider who created ‘Starfish on the Beach’. The fact that each child attending received books and then had the opportunity to give back to the library was super, also!”—Nancy Hughes, Branch Manager, Bertie County Public Library, Windsor, North Carolina

"Thank you for coming to our community and encouraging reading!" —Tiffany Strawn, Show Low, Arizona (mother of 3 year old son Winzer shown in photo at top of page)