Books have always been in my life; even when I was little, my mom would read to me. It is because of this that I learned to read at the age of two and, later on, founded Books For Bedtime. Ever since that fateful day, when I first discovered my love, my passion, my fuel, I have always had a book with me. So of course, having always had books around me, finding out that there were children my age who didn’t have books at their beck and call was unimaginable at first.

My mom has taught in urban book deserts my whole life. I remember very clearly my first experience realizing just how close to home book deserts were. I was visiting my mom at her school on my day off when we all went down to her school library. I remember heading over to browse the shelves to see what interesting books there might be and then being horrified when I realized how few books there were on the shelves. There were only three shelves full of books. Three. That means that there wasn’t even a full shelf of books for each grade in her K-6 school. I had known that book deserts existed, but I did not realize just how close to home they were.