Results

This past October, we began partnering with Harlem Grown , a remarkable organization serving the children of Harlem by offering resources, inspiration, and a safe place where they can just be kids. In partnership with Grandma’s Place and supported by Humans of New York’s fundraising efforts, Harlem Grown is now building twelve libraries on their urban farms across the community. To support this community-based organization, we are curating and stocking these libraries with a commitment of more than 10,000 books a year. It’s imperative that children have access to stories that uplift, empower and inspire them to dream big. 

The organization aims to help young people, especially those that live in community homeless shelters, lead healthy and ambitious lives through mentorship education in urban farming, sustainability, and nutrition.

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 support the Toronto Public Library (TPL)—the world’s busiest urban public library system—through contributions to their Foundation, including a recent donation toward the construction of the new Jack Rabinovitch Reading Room. Rabinovitch founded the Giller Prize in 1994 to recognize excellence in Canadian literature, and, after he passed away in 2017, his family generously donated his extensive personal library to the TPL. This new 2,500 square-foot reading room will house the collection, making this diverse and important body of Canadian literature accessible to the public and providing a space for authors to read and work. In addition to this donation, we are also proud to support the TPL with contributions to their community bookmobiles, after-school programs for youth, and author readings.

After the Toronto Public Library’s branches were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of locations were repurposed to serve as pop-up food banks. We joined forces with the Toronto Public Library Foundation to help add kids’ books to the food hampers being distributed there for young readers who are without Internet or library access while schools and branches remain closed, as well as donated books for distribution to families in shelters. In total, we donated 2,000 books for young readers as part of a matching campaign that saw us pledge 500 books for every 500 books the Foundation purchased using donations from members of the public.

In 2019, we partnered with Agrasar, a Gurugram-based NGO that works with disadvantaged communities in India, and the Community Library Project, a Delhi-based reading project for children that focuses on building community libraries in the country. Their Learning Program is a low-cost, volunteer-driven citizen initiative. They work with disadvantaged communities, especially children, providing them access to a range of books and encouraging reading. We sponsored a reading fluency program for approximately 150 children from local village areas, helping them enhance their speed and reading accuracy, thereby honing their creative imagination and reading skills. This enabled kids to be more confident readers, accelerate their reading rate, and enjoy longer and more complex books. The children’s progress exceeded expectations in both fluency and accuracy. Many readers became skilled and confident to read longer, more age-appropriate books.

In August 2019, we launched a monthlong integrated campaign to celebrate iconic bestselling writer Sudha Murty’s 69th birthday, highlighting not only her writing but also Murty herself. A literary gem, Murty writes about a variety of topics that are contextual and relatable, and we wanted to pay tribute to her written work and humanitarian spirit. We created a complete collection of all her books for adults and children called the Sudha Murty Library, donating several sets to five public libraries as well as to the Community Library Project, which establishes free community libraries in underserved communities. We also created special, exclusive collectibles to be sold at bookstores across India that showcased her books and decorated their shops to highlight the writer all month long. To learn more, click here.

In January 2019, we partnered with the American Library Association to create the Penguin Random House Library Award for Innovation. The award recognizes the libraries and staff who have overcome hardship and adversity to creative lasting innovative community service programs that inspire and connect with readers. It awards $10,000 to a principal awardee and four runners-up $1,000 worth of Penguin Random House titles each. To learn more, click here. To learn more about our previous winners and how to apply for this year’s award, click here.

Libraries are suffering from a chronic lack of investment – 44% of schools serving the U.K.’s most disadvantaged communities do not have a school library. So far, we’ve worked with 139 primary schools, supporting them to transform their libraries and reading spaces into hubs of creativity and imagination. We’ve reached over 30,000 pupils, and donated more than 50,000 books and trained over 200 teachers. We’re excited to expand Puffin World of Stories to 80 more schools from September 2020. To learn more, click here.

To celebrate the 5-year anniversary of Penguin Random House, we hosted a book drive, collecting a total of 733 books. We donated the books to the Library Project, an nonprofit dedicated to improving literacy among children in rural Asia, specifically China, Cambodia, and Vietnam, by donating books (in local languages) and shelving to build libraries in schools of need. The Library Project also provides support and training for teachers, to help them maximize use of their libraries and encourage children to read more. To learn more about the Library Project, click here.