First Book Blog - Education News & Stories

First Book Launches STEMtober to Highlight New Educational STEM Resources

Posted in: Focus on First Book

When you hear the name, “First Book ,” STEM resources like coding robots might not be the first (or second) thing you think of. The First Book community of educators know us mostly for our collection of high quality, new, free or low-cost books. But because we aim to provide the educators and children we serve with eve...

Building Inclusive Classrooms with YASMIN en Español

Posted in: Author Voices, Our Bookshelf

Today’s blog post is written by guest blogger Saadia Faruqi, author of the YASMIN series of early reader titles. As a Pakistani American immigrant with a love of English literature, I’ve always found translations of stories a fascinating subject. I remember as a child watching a Pakistani movie dubbed into English, and...

First Book Staff Recommends: Books That Changed Us for the Better

Posted in: Our Bookshelf

Every month, First Book's team of children's & young adult literature experts on staff (or as they like to call themselves, THE BOOK NERDS) choose their favorite titles from the Marketplace. This month's theme is Books that Changed Us for the Better . These titles mean a lot to the team, and we're sure they will resona...

All I Ever Wanted… Stories of Children of the Incarcerated

Posted in: Author Voices

This blog post was written by guest blogger Erika Duncan, Founder and Director of Herstory Writers Workshop . At any given time, there are 2.7 million children with one or two parents in prison or jail in the United States. Some are told that “Mommy is in school” or “Daddy is in the army.” Others are told nothing. Othe...

Q&A with Pizza Hut BOOK IT! Author Partner, Tom Angleberger

Posted in: Author Voices

What could be better than pizza and books? For us at First Book, not much! Pizza Hut's BOOK IT! program will provide 10,000 books to classrooms for the 2019-2020 school year via First Book to encourage students to find joy in reading. We spoke with this year's BOOK IT! author partner and a First Book favorite author, T...

How Educators Use "All Are Welcome" in the Classroom

Posted in: For Educators, Our Bookshelf

Millions of students and educators across the country have returned to the classroom with high hopes of success, growth, and excitement. To support them, we chose All Are Welcome - a picture book by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman - as the focus of our back-to-school campaign to help the First Book community of e...

Get Ready for PETE WEEK! WIN a package of Pete-tastic Prizes!

Posted in: Archive

In honor of the release of the newest Pete the Cat book, Pete the Cat & the Perfect Pizza Party , we’ve brought together our partners to create a fun & delicious prize package to give away every day next week – or as we like to call it – PETE WEEK! Thanks to our partners Harper Collins Children’s Books, Merry Makers, a...

Imagine A School Without A Library

Posted in: Impact Stories

Ed. Note: Originally posted in April 2016, the significance of abundant, diverse school libraries still holds relevancy today. Libraries are the gatekeepers to cultural, social, and individual growth and must continue acting as an inviting, welcoming development hub for students and teachers. Today’s guest blog post is...

First Book and the Guru Krupa Foundation Have Provided More Than 137,000 Books and Essentials—Including Meals—to More Than 52,000 Kids in Need Since 2012

Posted in: Press Room

WASHINGTON (February 14, 2019) – The Guru Krupa Foundation, a private foundation that supports the preservation and acquisition of knowledge, today announced that in collaboration with First Book, they have distributed more than 137,000 books and educational resources to more than approximately 52,000 kids in need in t...

dd's DISCOUNTS and First Book Celebrate Partnership's 10th Anniversary

Posted in: Our Partners

"dd’s and First Book have made such an amazing impact on our students. Thanks to this program we have been able to get high interest, age-appropriate books into the hands of our students and build home libraries! We are growing a culture of readers!" This year, dd's DISCOUNTS and First Book celebrated the 10th annivers...