The children at Pleasant Valley Elementary School received an early Christmas gift this year — books from Books Are Fun’s signature Book Blast program.

“We want to make sure every kid goes home with brand-new books,” said Ben Kaplan, the founder, president and CEO of Books Are Fun based in Colorado. Each PVES student went home with at least five books on Monday afternoon.

Kaplan and the company’s mascot Bookly, the big red book, visited the children at PVES and Kaplan talked about the importance of reading. Bookly was really Charlie Schneider, the chief sales officer for Books Are Fun.

“Just remember this. For the rest of your life, never stop reading. It’s the key to developing your imagination and becoming whatever you want to be when you grow up,” Kaplan told the second graders. “It’s like one of the most fun things you can possibly do, so have so much fun with your books.”

PVES librarian Candice Bustos organized the program for the school.

She said she didn’t know about Book Blast until a company representative contacted her.

“They have been wonderful to work with,” she said. “We have more than 6,500 books going home with children today. We had 10 pallets of books delivered here.”

The goal of the Book Blast program is to get children excited about reading. To do that, they wrap up a group of books for each child, then have all the children in the class unwrap their gifts at the same time. Their hope is that by unwrapping the gifts together it will create an exciting shared moment of discovery for the children.

Kaplan said they hope the experience will create a little positive peer pressure and explained what he meant.

As the children who like to read dig into their books, they will talk about the books to their classmates. The reluctant readers in the class will hopefully get curious enough to see what all the talk is about, so then they pick up their books and read them.

The goal of Book Blast is to spark a love of reading in the children, so that they will become lifelong readers.

Books Are Fun has worked with more than 55,000 schools nationwide to increase literacy for over 30 years.

“I always felt like we could do so much more given our reach,” Kaplan said. “Education is the cornerstone of society. Literacy is the key to education.”

The idea for Book Blast came up during the pandemic. Kaplan said he talked to a principal who wanted to get his students reading more books because their reading skills were falling behind.

“We can’t solve the problems in the world, but this was one we were uniquely positioned to make an impact with,” Kaplan said.

Providing books free of charge to children across the country through Book Blast became a passion project for Kaplan

“The results were tremendous,” he said.

Like the children and PVE, children across the country from kindergarten through eighth grade were thrilled to receive the books. But in order to provide the books for free and sustain the program, Kaplan said he needed help, so he talked to several publishers. Many agreed to subsidize the cost of the books.

“They made it possible to continue doing the program on a large scale,” he said. “The publishing companies are full of people who really truly care about kids and dedicated their lives to making reading fun and accessible.”

Any school interested in the program can go to the company’s website at www.booksarefun.com, and contact a company representative.