An important part of our mission is to ensure that every child has access to reading. We are proud to support the Starlight Children’s Foundation Book Mobile Program, which offers pediatric patients at local hospitals the chance to explore fictional worlds through books, for the past nine years. The program provides a necessary pastime for severely children throughout their hospital stays.
We initially supplied book mobile carts to The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan and Harlem Hospital in Manhattan. We bolstered our support for the program by supplying book mobile carts to Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, and the Brooklyn Hospital Center in Brooklyn; now impacting all five New York City buroughs. The carts are replenished annually with Penguin Random House children’s books.
For the third year in a row, we partnered with the Kellogg Company to bring the Feeding Reading Program to students nationwide. The program was facilitated by our Special Markets team. Their partnership with Kellogg’s Feeding Reading program allowed anyone who buys participating products to earn credits for a free Penguin Random House book. With 125 diverse books to choose from in the program, participants had the opportunity to redeem up to 6 books.
The creative packaging included classic Penguin Random House literary characters such as the Berenstain Bears, Corduroy and The Very Hungry Caterpillar were featured on more than 100,000,000 Kellogg’s products.
We believe the right to freedom of expression and the protection of writers against censorship and unjust persecution are indispensable to the development of society and culture. In honor of Banned Books Week, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and highlighting the value of free and open access to information, we partnered with the American Bookseller Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) to celebrate the theme of the week “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”
From the week of September 26 – October 2, we donated $15,000 to ABFEE. Penguin Random House stands with ABOFF’s mission of promoting and protecting the free exchange of ideas. The organization issues statements on significant free expression controversies, participates in legal cases involving First Amendment rights, collaborates with other groups with an interest in free speech, and provides education about the importance of free expression to booksellers, politicians, the press and the public.
We came together with longstanding partner Save the Children to bring their annual 100 Days of Reading to 10 US cities. The tour kicked off in San Francisco to bring summer learning, fun activities, and essential resources that helped kids need to prepare for the school year.To support the program, we donated 50,000 children’s books in addition to providing content for their online library.
Stops included Los Angeles, New Orleans, Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte and Stanley, NC, Bay City, MI, Racine, WI, Chicago, and Boston.
For Giving Tuesday in 2021, we partnered with our longtime friends at First Book to give the gift of reading by supporting the “Give a Million” campaign through providing a 200,000 book donation to First Book toward their million-book effort. This Giving Tuesday initiative helps support our shared values and mission to foster a universal passion for reading.
In honor of the global publication of RENEGADES: Born in the USA, a collection of conversations between Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, and legendary musician Bruce Springsteen, we made a financial donation to the Obama Foundation’s youth leadership programs, expanding upon our earlier donation of one million children’s books to First Book in the Obama family name. A portion of President Obama’s proceeds from RENEGADES will benefit youth leadership programs at the Obama Foundation.
We partnered with The Association for Rural and Small Libraries to launch a rolling grant program to recognize rural, small and tribal libraries that support underserved communities in the U.S. and U.S. territories. The program will award grants of up to $2,500 to libraries that demonstrate a true need. Penguin Random House and ARSL have worked together to ensure the application process is simple and straightforward to remove as many barriers to applying for a grant as possible. Grants are not limited to literacy and may be used for everything from library programming and books to resources like hotspots that help community members access important information. In-kind donations will also be considered.
We proudly continue our partnership with the New York Public Library (NYPL). The New York Public Library program closely aligns with our ongoing commitment to support a culture of reading and build the widest audience possible for our authors. Our partnership with the NYPL will ensure that New Yorkers can utilize the vital services provided by their libraries free of charge, including access to books, computers, early literacy workshops, and job training classes. This year, we teamed up with Knopf author Jhumpa Lahiri to encourage readers to participate in the campaign and make a donation to the NYPL. In an email sent out to donors, Jhumpa discussed the role libraries played in broadening her literary world and jumpstarting her writing career: “Wherever I have lived, whatever I have studied or pursued, libraries have always been my true home.”
Throughout the summer, the NYPL has gradually expanded service across all of their open grab-and-go locations in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, where patrons can now browse for books and reserve time to use public computers to browse the Internet and search their catalog. Click here to learn more.
In the summer of 2021, we donated nearly 2,000 Spanish language books to REFORMA’s Children In Crisis Project, a program that addresses the needs of asylum-seeking children arriving at the United States border. Among the titles donated included were El cielo, las estrellas y la noche by Jean Pierre Verdet (Altea); 100 genios del balón by Alberto Lati (Plan B); El beso de la traición by Erin Beaty (Alfaguara Juvenil); 15 consejos malvados para ser tu propia superheroína by Vania Bachur (Altea); and Historia en meme by Guillermo Perez Romero (Plan B).
For years, REFORMA has been working to provide Books & Library Connections for Unaccompanied Refugee Children through its Children In Crisis Project. REFORMA: The National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking, is an affiliate of the American Library Association, promoting the development of library collections to include Spanish-language and Latino oriented materials; the recruitment of more bilingual and bicultural library professionals and support staff; the development of library services and programs that meet the needs of the Latino community; the establishment of a national information and support network among individuals who share our goals; the education of the U.S. Latino population in regards to the availability and types of library services; and lobbying efforts to preserve existing library resource centers serving the interests of Latinos.
We reprised our longstanding partnership with Every Town for Gun Safety in honor of National Gun Violence Awareness Day on June 7 and in support of #WearOrange weekend, to help raise awareness and send a powerful message to end gun violence.
As in past years, colleagues were encouraged to show individual support through participation in a Special Unlimited Matching Gift Program the weekend of June 7.
Whether they posted on social media with tags to end gun violence or shared Penguin Random House’s National Gun Violence Awareness Day Book List, colleagues came together to spread the important message that gun violence must end.
