Every Kid in Georgia Has Access to 8,000 Free Books this Summer

• May 14, 2015

Night time connection

Calling all kids in Georgia!

Start limbering up your fingers, because this summer Get Georgia Reading and myON are delivering more than 8,000 books to your computer and mobile devices that you can access 24 hours a day, every day through Aug. 30. It’s like having your own personal library right at your fingertips.

Hey, parents, teachers, and librarians, we want you to join the fun, too.

You can search from more than 50 different categories and genres, fiction and nonfiction books, picture books, graphic novels, chapter books, titles for struggling and reluctant readers, and Spanish and bilingual titles.

What’s popular so far this year? It looks like Georgia kids favor nonfiction. The top titles are:

• Scary Ghosts,
• Great White Sharks: On the Hunt,
• King of Pop: The Story of Michael Jackson, and
• Anacondas: On the Hunt.

During summer 2014, Georgians read 3,246 books and spent 845 hours and 11 minutes reading. This year, we’ve already read 8,198 books and spent 1,727 hours reading, and summer break hasn’t even started.

The Challenge

Our challenge for you is to light up your community on this heat map:

We’ll keep our eye on who’s reading the most. Cedartown is in the lead right now, with 14,957 sessions (they’re that dark blue dot on the top left of the heat map). Kingsland, Valdosta, Dallas, and Jonesboro hold the number 2 through 5 slots.

To login, please go to www.myON.com and click the red Log in now button.

Enter the following information.

School Name: Get Georgia Reading, Georgia Campaign for Grade-Level Reading

(Note: DO NOT cut and paste, instead start typing “Get Georgia” and select the school from the drop down menu)

Username:  read

Password: read

We would love to hear from you

If you write a book review, recommend books you like, or send reading a selfie to Lynn Peisner at lynn@gafcp.org, we’ll publish them on getgeorgiareading.org.

myON
myON’s books come with features that create a “reading environment,” with an optional audio component, word and sentence highlighting, and a sidebar with a built-in dictionary. More than an electronic reading application, myON tracks the habits of its readers and can tailor recommendations for the students and provide educators more insight into what works for kids (what’s being read from start to finish) and what doesn’t (what books are rarely opened, or opened and not finished).

“Sometimes kids don’t always know their reading level, and sometimes state tests aren’t always accurate at defining what growth really is,” said myON President Todd Brekhus. “Our basic theory of design is similar to an all-you-can-eat buffet: If there are enough things on the buffet that children already know they like, the more likely they are to try to something new if it’s available. Our mission is to get kids to read, to grow and branch out as readers, and to get them loving reading.”

For more information about myON, contact Saralee Parker at sparker@myon.com, or at 678-910-6661.