Local author Nancy Bo Flood recites a story from one of her children’s books during the recent “Free-For-All” book fair in Glenwood Springs. Flood worked with teachers on the Navajo Nation for about 20 years in developing books for kids about their culture, and she believes access to a diversity of books is critical to democracy.
Local volunteers gave away about 7,000 new and used books, in English and Spanish, at the “Free-For-All” book fair at the Glenwood Springs Community Center earlier this month.
The annual event is a lot like a school book fair — with prizes, story time and art activities — but the books are free, and adults are welcome too.
Local parent and pediatrician Rebecca Percy started the free-book fair with several community members last year as a way to promote literacy equity for children and adults.
“I mean equity in the sense of having a home library, having access to a book you can read at home, something that feels like it’s actually yours, that you can take with you through your life or pass to somebody else,” Percy said. “And we know that the more access that kids have to their own library at home, the better socioeconomic, mental and physical health that they have long term.”
Percy, who works at the Castle Valley Children’s Clinic in Carbondale and New Castle, got the idea for the book fair after seeing how excited kids and local residents were about the free books they offer their patients.
“At our clinics, we offer both a food pantry and books to our patients since kids don’t have as much free access to books anymore in our community,” Percy said. “And so I started collecting them and giving them out to kids at the office, and one of the teachers, Shelby Williams, from the RE-2 school district reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I have a whole bunch of books. Can I give them to you?’ And I was like, ‘You know what? We could be expanding our free-book program.’”
Eight-year-old Buggy Percy, second from right, along with her siblings and friends, volunteered at this year’s “Free-For-All” book fair at the Glenwood Springs Community Center on Dec. 13. The event was organized by local parent and pediatrician Rebecca Percy as a way to promote literacy equity for kids and adults.
At this year’s book fair, held Dec. 13, local authors signed copies of their books; the owner of the new Alpenglow bookstore in Glenwood Springs gave out stickers and pins; and kids got to decorate their own bookmarks with their personal reading goal for the year.
All four of Percy’s children volunteered at the event, including 8-year-old Buggy, who filled out her bookmark with a goal to read a minimum of 20 minutes each day for a month.
“I like to read mysteries and comic books and fairy tales, and I think reading is important because, like, you get to learn from things you can just read in your head, and you don’t have to have a lot of money to read,” Buggy said. “But not everybody can get books, so that’s why we’re giving them away, so we can all have books.”
Glenwood Springs Elementary School student Aaliyah Salinas holds “Grimmtastic Girls,” the first in a fairy-tale series of books by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams. Salinas is growing up bilingual and enjoyed finding books in Spanish and English at the free community book fair in Glenwood Springs on Dec. 13.
Closing the literacy gap with Spanish-language books
For this year’s event, Percy and book fair volunteers worked with several local business sponsors, including Castle Valley Children’s Clinic, as well as the Two Rivers Community Foundation to raise funds to include a larger selection of Spanish-language books for all ages.
“We have a huge population of people who live in this valley who are primarily Spanish-speaking, or who, especially as kids, their parents are maybe primarily or only Spanish-speaking, and they’re learning English at schools,” Percy said. “They may not have the same access to books either because they’ve moved here and not had the ability to bring their own books with them, or once they get here, their family does not have the resources to buy their own books.”
At the book fair this month, 6-year-old New Castle resident Amber, who goes to Riverview School in Glenwood Springs, was checking out the kids’ Spanish section with her dad.
“I read in my school, and I like books in Spanish and English,” she said.
Amber’s father said, in Spanish, that reading has helped his daughter grow up bilingual: “Se me hace muy bien esta feria de libros porque así motivan a los niños a leer en los dos idiomas,” which translates to “I think this book fair is very good because it motivates children to read in both languages.”
Daisy Salinas and her daughter Aaliyah, who attends Glenwood Springs Elementary School, were also browsing the kids’ Spanish section.
“I didn’t actually know they would have books in Spanish, but we’re bilingual and it’s amazing that they have books in different languages,” Salinas said. “And I think it’s great that they can provide free books for kids that may not have the resources to go out and buy books or aren’t aware that they can go and get a free library card.”
For her part, Aaliyah liked finding books in the Spanish and English sections that she had never heard of before.
“Like this one — it’s called ‘Grimmtastic Girls,’ and it just looks like a cool book,” she said.
On the other side of the table, Silt resident Indhira Barrón was picking out several Spanish books for her friends and colleagues.
“People that I know and work with, they’re interested in having something to do other than being on the phone, so they just said, ‘If you go there, please get me a book,’” Barrón said. “Most of our Spanish-speaking community, they work until 5 in Aspen, so it’s very difficult to get here before 6, and that’s why I’m here.”
Barrón hopes to start a Spanish book club with her friends so they can help one another disconnect from their devices and spend more time together.
“You know, so that we can share these books,” she said. “And because this is a great opportunity to have something very healthy to do.”
Children and adults look at free books during the annual “Free-For-All” book fair at the Glenwood Springs Community Center this month. Local volunteers gave away about 7,000 new and used books, in English and Spanish, at this year’s event.
Focusing on equity and access amid book-banning controversy
Although Percy did not intend for the book fair to be a political statement against book-banning, she acknowledged that with local and national efforts to restrict certain books from libraries, it’s hard to separate an event that celebrates free access to a diversity of books from the controversy.
“I do feel reading itself is a political act because it is a space where people have the right to visualize the world in many different ways, and I think some people argue that that’s extremely political,” Percy said. “So this event is not political in the sense that I’m coming in to mandate anything, but it is political in the sense that I am allowing people to have access to books, and some people find that very scary, but I think it’s extremely liberating.”
Percy recently applied for the Glenwood Springs seat on the Garfield County Library District Board but was not able to attend the interview due to a scheduling conflict. The Garfield County commissioners pushed to the new year a decision on filling the position, and although Percy isn’t sure that she’ll apply again, she’s committed to making sure people have access to a wide range of books.
“To me, books are a place where children and people can go and see themselves fully. It’s a place where they might read something for the first time and realize that they’re not alone. It might be the first place where they realize that how they feel is OK,” Percy said. “And it could also be a space where they realize there are people who are different from them who have a valid viewpoint as well, so books are scary because you might have your beliefs questioned and really have to reckon with that.”
Local author Nancy Bo Flood, who helped lead story-time sessions and signed copies of her children’s books during the community book fair, agreed.
Flood worked with teachers on the Navajo Nation for about 20 years in developing books for kids about their culture, and she believes access to books is critical to democracy, especially with recent efforts to ban them across the country.
“I think that’s so important to us ever existing and as a democracy is having the right to choose what we want to read and to have what books we want to have in our own home,” Flood said. “It’s been so good to see so many books come out about people and cultures that we’ve never written about before, because every child should see themselves in a book, and it’s happening, and we certainly don’t want to shut it down.”
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