NorthCountry FCU Installs Children's Book Nooks to Encourage Reading and Learning

South Burlington, VT – To support a lifelong love of reading and learning, NorthCountry Federal Credit Union has installed Children’s Book Nooks in each of its twelve locations throughout northern Vermont. Children are welcome to take a book home, and keep it as long as they like. They can return it or pass it along when finished.

According to Handbook of Early Literacy Research by Susan B. Neman and David K. Dickinson, many children lack access to books. In middle-income neighborhoods the ratio of books per child is 13 to 1. In low-income neighborhoods, the ratio plummets to one age-appropriate book for every 300 children. NorthCountry wants to help improve these statistics.

The project’s impact extended to the pre-technology students of Green Mountain Technology and Career Center (GMTCC) in Hyde Park, who built the Children’s Book Nooks for NorthCountry as a hands-on lesson on different approaches to production. GMTCC had produced these resources in the past for local libraries and towns.

The non-profit Children’s Literacy Foundation (CLiF) donated nearly 200 new children’s books for the project. CLiF nurtures a love of reading and writing among low-income, at-risk and rural children up to age 12 throughout Vermont and New Hampshire. In 2018, CLiF's Summer Readers program served 10,829 kids and gave away 21,658 books!

NorthCountry is a community credit union, serving over 55,000 people from 12 locations in northern Vermont. It was organized in 1950. NorthCountry supports community initiatives focusing on children and education. NorthCountry has supported CLiF’s Year of the Book for several years in schools throughout Vermont.