KidsRead / KidsWrite

Each year, KidsRead / KidsWrite invites public school students from all over the five boroughs to The Center for Fiction to meet the children’s, young adult, and literary fiction writers they have been reading in class. Our goal is to help students gain not only proficiency but a passion for books, and our method is personalization of the reading experience, exposing children at an age where they are particularly responsive to role models.

We work with teachers and school administrators to develop discussion questions and incorporate KidsRead writers into their curriculum. We work with publishers to provide students with books by these authors for free, both for their school libraries and for the students to keep. We are also happy to work with schools to gather books for them not related to our author events.

We keep the events small, with a maximum of 80 students per event, so that all kids have time to ask questions, get their book signed, and have a personal interaction with the writer. We do all of this at no cost to schools.

“It was truly fabulous for our students.  They kept talking about it after we got back.”
—John Waters, teacher at John Adams High School