What Makes a Book Club Work? Give Children Real Choice

Introducing Judy Newman and United States of Readers

00:02Timmy Bauer: What’s up, literacy advocates? It’s me, your host, Timmy Bauer, and my guest today is Judy Newman. She’s the president of Book Clubs and eCommerce at Scholastic. She is a career literacy advocate, determined to ensure that all children declare, ‘I am a reader.’ Her mission and passion is to help teachers and families connect all kids with engaging books in which they can see themselves, use their imaginations, and make sense of the world around them. On this episode of The Literacy Advocate, we are going to be talking about why and how she started United States of Readers, how someone grows a book club successfully, and some of the most challenging things that she’s working on right now. Judy, welcome to the podcast.

00:45Judy Newman: Hey, Timmy. How are you? So great to be here.

00:48Timmy Bauer: Same. I’m excited to talk to you. Since we’re going to be diving into how and why you started United States of Readers, let’s just have you start by explaining what it is.

Why Every Child Should Be Included

00:57Judy Newman: Well, first of all, being called a career literacy advocate is probably the best thing I’ve ever heard, so thank you, sir. As you said, I’ve been at Scholastic running the Book Clubs division for many, many decades. You remember those flyers: the teachers hand them out, the kids choose the books, the book box arrives in the school, and everybody’s excited. That’s what we’ve been doing. But what we realized over recent years is that all the kids couldn’t participate. They didn’t have enough funds. The teacher was buying the books themselves, and so that joyful book-box experience was not happening in schools everywhere as we envisioned it. So I said, ‘You know what? Enough. We’re taking the pressure off the teachers. This is much too important for kids. All kids need to participate.’ We said, ‘Let’s come up with a new model where kids who live in poverty, who are in high-Title I schools, can participate. Everyone can participate.’

How the Pilot Works

01:54Timmy Bauer: Yeah, awesome. What exactly does it look like now? How does it function?

02:01Judy Newman: This is our pilot year. We have 80 schools—one in every state, as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico—and we’re serving 32,000 kids. Every kid in the schools that are chosen for the pilot can participate. We recruit and vet the schools. We make sure that they are high-Title I schools. Typically, they have very low reading-proficiency scores. We mail them a startup kit, and then five times a year the kids get those colorful flyers, just like the regular program. They get to choose two books each time—what they want for themselves—that they get to keep. Then there’s other stuff that readers do: they have a bookplate where they can write their name, bookmarks, and free books for the teachers. It can really be that true celebration where every kid in the class gets books. No one’s left out. It realizes the original promise of the clubs.

A Program Built to Reach Every State

03:01Timmy Bauer: You said you have how many schools right now?

03:04Judy Newman: We wanted to be in every state in the United States and, as I said, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., because we want to signal that we’re all in this together. We have 80 schools. That’s about 1,400 teachers in those schools and 32,000 children in our pilot year.

Funding and the Goal of Two Million Children

03:24Timmy Bauer: That’s awesome. Is that a set number for now? How do schools get involved? What’s the vision for the growth of this thing?

03:32Judy Newman: The first year was 100 percent funded by James Patterson, who, as you probably know, is a huge bestselling author. He believes so much in this mission that he gave us a million and a half dollars to do it. We’re thrilled, as is he, by the year-one results. We’re actually starting to meet with him about year two, bringing in more funders, and growing the program. Our goal is to reach two million children in these high-Title I schools within five years. Getting from here to there is our challenge.

Choice, Respect, and Listening

04:07Timmy Bauer: Speaking of challenges, I want to ask you about insights that you’ve gained along the way as you’ve tried to grow a book club successfully. This could potentially be helpful for anyone who’s trying to grow a book club, whether it’s a small one or, like in my case, I want to grow a book club of readers across the schools that I tour. I’m curious about things you have tried that have really worked and things that you thought would work that turned out not to work.

04:31Judy Newman: The first guiding principle is: respect the children. Respect the kids. What do they want? Not what we think they should be reading, but what do they want to choose? Choice is a driving thing and is really important. If you want to have a book club, what books do they want to be part of? What books do they want? Give them that agency. That really goes a long way. That’s what we knew, and that’s what we’re hearing confirmed. Also, fun books, brand-new books, exciting books. Some kids want to read crusty stuff from the old days, but a lot of kids want fresh, new, exciting topics. Let’s not force on kids the types of books we think they should read. Again, let them decide. I’ve done this my entire career: listen to the customer. Talk to the teachers. Talk to the kids. Talk to the principals. We’re doing a whole research program, hearing what they have to say. Just because we think it’s working and we think it’s a good idea doesn’t mean anybody else thinks it is. We’re transparent. We’re constantly communicating with them. They know how to get to us all the time if they have any questions. Then there are the basics: you’ve got to ship the book orders in a timely manner and completely. Listening to customers, listening to your readers, listening to your book-club members—that is the most important thing you can do. They’ll tell you if you’re open to listening.

Learning by Doing

05:56Timmy Bauer: As you’ve been growing this thing, or when you were trying to get it off the ground, is there anything that you thought would be helpful that you tried and it turned out it wasn’t a good idea or didn’t work out?

06:06Judy Newman: I haven’t gotten there yet. There are interesting observations. For example, with pre-K children—little, little kids—we wanted them to choose two books of their own, but they weren’t ready for that yet. In many of the classrooms, the teachers did a whole-class exercise where every kid got two of the same books. We’re watching as the year progresses how the kids are getting a little bit more confidence to be able to choose. That was sort of an unintended consequence. Every kid is ending up with the same number of books, but they weren’t yet able to choose exactly which ones they wanted. It was done more at the class level. Those are the kinds of on-the-ground insights that we wouldn’t have known in advance. We have to see in the doing.

Teacher Participation

06:52Timmy Bauer: What about the challenge of getting high-level—or, sorry, deep—participation from the teachers and the students? Is that a challenge? If so, what have you figured out?

07:08Judy Newman: Right now, we have north of 95 percent participation at the teacher level. What is always shocking to everyone, including me after all these years, is that teacher rosters change. Teachers come and go in a school all the way through to February, frankly. You would think it would settle down. We didn’t have a complete list of exactly who was teaching which grade until well into the fall semester. That said, most teachers have participated. Most teachers wanted to do it, and they love that the kids are getting something free. A lot of these kids don’t get very much for free, certainly with no strings attached. Every kid in the class can participate. What we don’t yet know is the actuality of how the teachers are sharing the flyers or talking up the books. That stuff we’re going to watch. We’re starting the research project now to really get a handle on how that’s actually happening in the classroom.

Designing for Scale

08:06Timmy Bauer: That’s very interesting. I asked you right before we hit record, ‘What’s the biggest challenge you’re trying to figure out, or that you’re working on, right now?’ You were like, ‘Once you hit record, ask me.’ So what is it?

08:22Judy Newman: We are pros at this. The team at Scholastic Book Clubs has been doing this forever, and we can muscle through anything. We had a rough fall. We had COVID, storms, shipping delays, and so on and so forth. We know how to manually intervene and fix it. You can pretty much fix anything for 1,400 teachers if you work hard. You could drive the books there yourself. My challenge is to make sure we can scale. That’s why I’m always thinking, ‘Okay, we understand that you can solve this problem this way, but when we’re at two million kids, you’re not going to be able to do it that way.’ I’m always looking to the future. People say to me, ‘Well, how do you know?’ I’m like, ‘I have no doubt that we’re going to get the funding, that this is going to be amazing.’ It never occurs to me that that’s not going to happen. I’m not afraid of that. I’m not worried about it. I think it’s such a beautiful program, and it’s really hitting everyone’s needs. I just want to make sure we’re always looking to scale and not just solving the immediate problem in front of us.

A Closing Message for Teachers

09:25Timmy Bauer: I love it. This has been a really fun interview, Judy. Most of my listeners are teachers in classrooms. If there’s a takeaway that you would want them to have, what would it be? And where would you like to direct them? How can they connect with you?

09:43Judy Newman: I have to say, I’ve gone back to graduate school. I’m at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, trying to really learn, at this stage of the game, what teachers are going through so I can really understand that. There is a website: Scholastic.com/UnitedStatesofReaders. You can get a sense of it there, and you can always email me directly at jnewman@scholastic.com. We have a team of people who help me answer if things get too busy. I’m looking forward to hearing from anyone and any responses. Like I said, teachers do the most important job in the world, and we want to support them in every way we possibly can on this literacy journey.

10:26Timmy Bauer: Great. It was awesome talking to you, Judy. Thank you so much for being a guest on my show.

10:29Judy Newman: Thank you. Enjoy. I look forward to talking to you soon.