NVNR 2024 opened Thursday, August 8, on a generous and inspirational note with a "Bookmobile Rally" featuring three mobile bookstores operating within driving distance (naturally) of the conference.
Read Early and Daily (READ) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to giving children access to new, quality, and culturally relevant books of their own. Founder and Executive Director Jennifer Sauter-Price studied Child Development and Family Studies before going on to receive her Masters of Social Work from the University of Texas. She created and wrote the parenting newsletter Texas Tots, and served as The Reading Connecting Book Club Coordinator — a position that inspired her to create Read Early and Daily (READ).
READ is supported by an online and pop up children’s bookshop and by the READ Book Bus which the organization created in 2019 with the support of a grant from the Gannett Foundation. The Book Bus allows the organization to visit underserved communities, housing complexes and schools, and to be at more community events.
Three Wishes Bookshop is a new children’s mobile bookshop serving Alexandria and other nearby communities in Virginia. Their customized van carries hundreds of children’s books for ages 0-12, including recent releases, favorite series, novels and graphic novels, board books, picture books, readers, and nonfiction. The van visits neighborhood gatherings, PTA events and any place where kids – and the grown-ups that love them – gather. The mobile children’s bookstore is a lifelong dream of owner Patti Exstein whose professional career is as a Reading Specialist in the educational system.
Reading Tree Books is a family-owned mobile bookstore housed in a vintage Nomad camper and specializing in used books and other book related handmade items for both kids and adults. It was founded by Janice Killian, a retired reading teacher, and her husband Jim. Killian credits her love of reading to her grandmother’s insistence on taking the kids to visit the bookmobile whenever it was in the neighborhood:
"We would come back to her house with our treasures and climb her big tree to read for the afternoon. Sometimes she would even bring our lunch out to us and hand it to us up in the tree."
