Articles tagged Vermont
General / Writing / Literacy Activities
CLiF’s 2024 Two-Sentence Writing Contest is underway! This year’s theme is “Tell Us a Two-Sentence Story That Takes Place in the Sky.” Free to enter, and open to all Vermont and New Hampshire kids 12 and under. Prizes will be awarded to top entries. Submissions must be received by March 29.
We want to offer special recognition to our bookstore friends holding book drives for CLiF this holiday season. Each of these stores is a community mainstay, and we are very grateful for our shared commitment to inspiring young readers throughout the Twin States. Just one more reason to shop small, local and literary this season–and every season!
At the Children’s Literacy Foundation, our work focuses on serving Vermont and New Hampshire children at highest risk of growing up with low literacy skills. It’s never been more important to ensure kids in our communities have equitable access to enriching literacy experiences and resources. CLiF’s programs serve children in shelters and affordable housing; refugee, foster, and migrant children; children in rural areas; children of incarcerated adults; children scoring below standard in schools; and many others.
It’s Giving Tuesday, a day to give back to causes you care about. Your donations to CLiF will be matched today (up to $10,000 total)! Double the impact you make on a child’s life. This Giving Tuesday, we’re trying to raise $20,000 to support multi-day writing workshops for low-income, at-risk, and rural kids (12 and … Continued
CLiF is hiring! We’re looking for a part-time (24 hours/week) Communications Manager to join our team. Work will be based in our Waterbury Center, VT HQ, though may be remote during the pandemic. We’re looking for a dynamic communications professional to manage our external communications, media relations, and overall outreach. Communications duties include: pitching media … Continued
For my first CLiF event, I went to the Year of the Book kick-off at Braintree Elementary School in Braintree, Vermont. As a smaller school, they have fewer than 100 students, but it was clear to me from the get-go that this didn’t prevent them from instilling a strong love of reading in the kids’ … Continued
One of the special things about CLiF is that we work with 66 of the best children’s, middle grade, and young adult authors in Vermont and New Hampshire. In normal years, we send them to schools, libraries, homeless shelters, prisons, camps, and more spaces where kids and families spend time in NH and VT. They … Continued
Writing / Book Club for Grown-ups
Friday, April 23rd, at 7:00 p.m. EST Sign up here. Since the fall, we’ve been offering a Book Club for Grown-ups with New Hampshire and Vermont authors who write for kids and adults. It’s a chance for grown-ups to connect with local authors and discuss a good book. We’ve talked to Sarah Stewart Taylor, Rajnii … Continued
Kids need books. Access to books is the number one way to ensure kids develop strong literacy skills, which are crucial to their future success. Books help develop empathy, vocabulary, and comprehension. They also provide a positive escape for many children from the challenges in their lives. They can be a connection to a larger … Continued
For me, there is nothing better than giving the perfect gift, something you know the person will love whether it is useful, hilarious, beautiful, luxurious, or reassuring [For the record, my best gift in recent memory was an underwater metal detector for my sister.]. This does not always make gift-giving easy though; I can easily … Continued
Walking into Camp Agape is wonderful. I’m greeted with smiles and cheers of “the storyteller’s here!” People might think kids who have a parent or caregiver or two under supervision of the Vermont Correctional Department might be nothing but trouble. Will kids with troubled backgrounds stay still and listen to folk and fairy tales? They … Continued
Once a year, the CLiF Staff and Board of Directors get together to discuss what CLiF has done over the past year, what’s coming up, and to enjoy dinner together while taking a breather from our busy, busy lives. That happened at CLiF World HQ on Monday, and this year, we had a lot to … Continued
What do shipwrecks, flying pigs, and talking fruit have in common? There were all featured in story submissions for the Vermont PBS Kids’ annual Writing Contest, which I had the pleasure of judging last week. Last Friday, I joined nine other writers, librarians, and members of educational non-profits at Vermont’s PBS headquarters in Colchester to … Continued
General / If you're a parent and...
When the temperature sneaks above 20 and the sun pokes out of the winter grey, I seize the opportunity to take my son skiing. He’s gone a handful of times, and each trip out to the slopes is a clean slate. I never know if our day will end within minutes with chilled fingers and tears or … Continued
Last Tuesday, about five hundred young readers filled the seats of Judd Hall at Vermont Technical College for the 2014 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award Ceremony.
General / CLiF Spotlight / Book Recommendations
Lots of news over the past two weeks! Here’s the roundup: First, happy Children’s Book Week! In the brilliant ideas department: Florida kids (and Salt Lake City, and a few others) with overdue books are allowed to read down their library fines–instead of having their borrowing cut off until they scrape together fees. Way to keep the library accessible to the … Continued
Probably most adults could not coherently discuss the differences between the 1840 and 1860 census how a daguerreotype differs from a tintype or the repercussions of the 1890 census being destroyed in a Department of Commerce fire. But the children of Island Pond and Lowell, Vermont can. Funded in part by CLiF Year of the … Continued
You might not know how the list is selected and why my living room was so cluttered.
CLiF has served over 350,000 children since 1998.