Little Libraries
Creating space for early literacy
What Are Little Libraries?
Early childhood literacy is one of the main predictors for success once children start school. Born from the value that all children should have access to books and opportunities to read, Little Libraries was formed in the Fall of 2018 to offer a free supply of books to children in local clinic waiting rooms. Offering books from birth through high school, Little Libraries delivers nearly 4,000 books each year to safety net clinics in San Mateo County and Santa Clara. Participating clinics include: Fair Oaks, Gardner Packard, Mayview, and Ravenswood.
Questions about Little Libraries?
Melanie Ramirez
Project Manager
If you want to donate books or help on sorting and delivery days, contact
If you are a Stanford undergraduate student looking to get involved, check out Story Times -- an undergraduate Cardinal Commitment through the Haas Center of Public Service at Stanford University
How are books distributed?
Stanford Peds Advocacy works in partnership with an Affiliate of the Association of Auxiliaries for Children at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (LPCH) Stanford to collect and distribute gently used books. Gently used books are gathered from a variety of sources by the Auxillary partners, local volunteers count, sort, and label books by age group (0-4, 4-8, 8+). Bilingual books are specifically labeled for easy identification for our dual-language families.
Signs visible in the clinic tell children and parents that they are free to take one or more books home with them to add to their growing home libraries.
What is the impact of Little Libraries To Date?
Since the fall of 2017 Little Libraries has distributed over 8,382 books to our partnering clinics
Testimonials
I'll go and I'll look and then there's like one kid like reading to a bunch of kids, all sitting at the bookshelf… you can't make this stuff up. It's so exactly what we want to be doing…
I've walked by and there's been a moment like that where either like a mom is reading to a bunch of kids, or an older kid is reading to a bunch of little kids, and nobody's on their cell phone, and everybody's... just being present in the waiting room-
-MD at one of our Little Libraries site