Second grade Navajo children loving their Magic Tree House books
“Every child is capable of using imagination. Every child has a hunger to know things.
But not all children have access to the books that can stimulate their imagination and satisfy their thirst for knowledge.”
Mary Pope Osborne, award-winning children’s book author
Children’s author Mary Pope Osborne joins forces with Eve’s Fund to support youth literacy
Our work to inspire young Navajo students to get excited about reading began in 2008 when we partnered with Mary Pope Osborne, author of the best-selling Magic Tree House book series. As our first joint project, Ms Osborne gave presentations to more than 1,800 children on the Navajo Nation and her publisher, Random House, donated 2,000 books.
The results were immediate. Students’ enthusiasm increased, their reading habits improved, and many earned higher grades. For some of the children, it was the first book they had ever owned. The kids love these books!
Building a Passion for Learning
Since then, we’ve continued working with Mary Pope Osborne to increase literacy in schools that serve primarily Native American students, on or near the Navajo Nation. The program has evolved and currently the Magic Tree House team, itself, donates thousands of books each year to schools in underserved communities. The powerful teaching tool that we have named, “Magic Tree House Teaching Bookshelf,” delivers wonderfully written educational books that are proven to inspire young readers to become more proficient and more dedicated readers. In addition to improving their academic performance, we believe the program will also help inspire them to become lifelong readers and learners.
Copied with permission from the author, Mary Pope Osborne
Each Teaching Bookshelf is customized to the needs of the participating elementary school. The current Teaching Bookshelf curriculum includes 10-20 of the original 28 titles in the Magic Tree House series. The sets contain 20 copies of each book (or, additional if needed), so teachers have enough copies of each title for their entire class. This aspect of the Eve’s Fund Magic Tree House program is unique in that it enables each child in the class to have his/her own copy of each book as the class reads it together, discusses the story, or to take a copy home for the night, for homework reading.” The complete set of titles remains property of the school so the Teaching Bookshelf can be uses with future classes over many years.
The books can be incorporated into the language arts, history and STEM curricula and can also be used as learning tools for additional subject areas. Because copies of 10 to 20 titles are provided, several classes in a school can read different titles in the series simultaneously.
Teachers working with the Teaching Bookshelf program find it easy to make connections between the Magic Tree House books and the class curriculum. As a result, students are enjoying reading more and learning about a wide range of topics.
To date, our Magic Tree House Teaching Bookshelf program has made an impact on more than 6,000 elementary students on the Navajo Nation.
Eligibility
Any Title 1 elementary school, private or public, located on or near the Navajo Nation that has not previously received a Magic Tree House Teaching Bookshelf from Eve’s Fund is eligible for consideration. For more information, please contact our program coordinator, Saralynn Piano, via our Contact page at: Contact Eve’s Fund (subject line: “Magic Tree House Teaching Bookshelf”).
Boosting learning lost following a pandemic: These books are needed now more than ever
Because of the constraints caused by COVID-19, it has been several years since we have been able to offer Magic Tree House Teaching Bookshelves to schools on the Navajo Nation. Eve’s Fund is excited to announce that starting in the 2023-2024 school year, we are planning to provide at least five bookshelves and 6,000 books to selected schools on or near the Navajo Nation.
Literacy programs such as Eve’s Funds’ Magic Tree House Teaching Bookshop are especially important now, to help make up for learning lost during the pandemic. As those of you on the “front lines” know, Native students, many of whom live in poverty and lack access to the Internet at home, faced daunting challenges during months of distance-learning. Many of these students live in multi-generational family units and suffered the loss of parents and grandparents due to the corona virus. We hope you agree this is the perfect time for the program to be re-introduced.
To help ensure a successful relaunch, we are most fortunate and excited to have the assistance of a former elementary teacher/librarian on the Navajo Nation, Saralynn Piano, who was successful in implementing this program in her school several years back. She believes strongly that the Magic Tree House book series is ideally suited to the academic and cultural needs of Navajo elementary school children.
We are thankful for our continuing partnership and the resources provided through Mary Pope Osborne’s “Classroom Adventures” program.
If you are an elementary school administrator or teacher and want your school to be considered for our innovative program, please contact us by email at: through our website contact page at: Contact Eve’s Fund.
Click to view some of our Magic Tree House Teaching Bookshelf photos
