By Amy Cockerham

Public Ed Works

DURHAM (June 19, 2025) – As the school year rolled to a close, kids’ faces lit up with excitement as they carefully chose 10 new books to take home with them for the summer.

It’s all a part of Durham nonprofit Book Harvest’s Books on Break program, which started in 2012. Rachel Stine is the senior director.

“Our mission is books for every child, support for every parent and literacy for every community, and we are really out to change and transform the literacy landscape for children,” Stine said.

The goal of the program is to combat learning loss that can often happen in the summer.

“They’re going to be out of school for 11 or 12 weeks, and that is a long time for any child when you have just started learning how to read,” Stine said. “Reading takes practice.”

See the excitement on kids faces as Book Harvest’s “Books on Break” program provides free books to kids in eight counties across N.C. For more information on how to support literacy across the state visit PublicEdWorks.org. Video credit: Book Harvest

Over the past decade, the program has expanded to serve eight counties, including Bladen, Burke, Buncombe, Davidson, Durham, Granville, Haywood and Person. It includes 30 schools and 10,420 elementary school students selecting 104,200 new books.

Students carefully select 10 books to take home for the summer.

Over the past decade, the program has expanded to serve eight counties, including Bladen, Burke, Buncombe, Davidson, Durham, Granville, Haywood and Person. It includes 30 schools and 10,420 elementary school students selecting 104,200 new books.

“We are open to doing this with whichever counties in the state of North Carolina,” Stine said. “We really want this program to be statewide and eventually national, so that this becomes the standard of care for all students.”

Paula Januzzi-Godfrey, a librarian at Glenn Elementary School in Durham, said “Books on Break” has been a fantastic program for their school since students are only able to check out one book at a time from the library.

“I would encourage other schools, wherever they are, if they had this opportunity to jump on,” Januzzi-Godfrey said. “I mean, first of all, books are expensive.”

Student shares one of his Books on Break selections with fellow student 

Stine said funds for the program come from a mixture of money from the school district, philanthropic dollars and foundation support.

“The fact that we can partner with a group in the community who’s going to also encourage and support literacy and reading for all age students, that’s just huge,” Januzzi-Godfrey said. “Something we can’t do by ourselves. None of us should be trying to help children and families in a vacuum. We all need to work together.”

Public Ed Works team pays a visit to Book Harvest this month. From left, Emma Battle, Paul Fulton and Rachel Stine of Book Harvest.

If you want to support Book Harvest’s endeavors, they have several volunteering opportunities or you can donate books as well. 

“24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Stine said. “We would love to receive donations of books, of children’s books, and we use those in a variety of our programs.”

Book Harvest staff showcase the Books from Birth program. Each box contains books to jumpstart a home library for newborns.

Januzzi-Godfrey said it’s clear the summer program is making a difference in students’ lives and she couldn’t be more grateful.

“We do the countdown,” Januzzi-Godfrey said. “So they’ll say, you know, ‘three more days, two more days, today’s our day.’ I mean, they just really look forward to it.”