Literacy in the Bag

Join the Texas Tamale Company for the

5th Annual Literacy in the Bag Book Drive

Benefiting: Literacy in Houston

Literacy in the Bag is a nonprofit organization supported by Texas Tamale Company, iWrite Literacy Organization and the Houston Public Library. Literacy in the Bag hosts an annual book drive and community outreach program that is driven to foster and promote literacy in Houston’s children and adults.

Each year, Literacy in the Bag redistributes donated children’s books to Houston and surrounding-area Title I Elementary and Middle Schools. These books help stock school libraries, classrooms and create at-home libraries for students. All adult books are donated to Friends of the Houston Public Library, which allocates funds to ASPIRE after-school programs, The Summer Reading Program for Children, and cultural programming and activities for the Houston community.

Since 2015, Literacy in the Bag has collected more than 6,500 children books and more than 16,000 adult books. More than 15,000 students have been served at the 20 schools that have received donated books. These donations have provided literacy resources to low-income children and families in Houston, giving them valuable and necessary tools to succeed in life.

About Us

By the time a child reaches the 4th grade, if they have not found a book they love, their chances of reading in the future drastically decrease.

Top 10 Picture Books
1.       Where the Wild Things Are
2.       The Very Hungry Caterpillar
3.       The Giving Tree
4.       Green Eggs and Ham
5.       Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
6.       If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
7.       The Day the Crayons Quit
8.       The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs
9.       The Cat in the Hat
10.     Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type

Top 10 Chapter Books
1.       Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
2.       Diary of a Wimpy Kid
3.       The Lightning Thief
          (Percy Jackson and the Olympians)
4.       The Hunger Games
5.       Holes
6.       Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
7.       The Adventures of Captain Underpants
8.       Charlotte’s Web
9.       The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
10.      A Wrinkle in Time

How Chase fell in love with reading.

When Chase was in 4th grade he participated in a book exchange and was given a copy of, The Lightning Thief, a popular book from the Percy Jackson Series. He attributes that book to his new found love for reading and later sparked his interest in writing and acting. Reading opened up the door to his imagination. Like Chase, most kids who become avid readers often give credit to one book that changed their mind about reading. Chase now thinks, "Reading is cool."

Listen to Chase tell it

"My grandfather was raised on a small farm in northern Canada, but used World War I as a means of joining the Royal Canadian Air Force and becoming a decorated war hero. He then became a teacher of aeronautics and was a huge supporter of reading and learning. He was my hero growing up. His three children became a notable physicist, a world renowned geologist, and my mother who gave up her career as a paleontologist to raise her kids.

My grandfather used to go to a local used bookstore in Santa Barbara, where he ran a small lemon and avocado grove, to buy paperback books by the yard so his grandchildren would read them while spending most summers at the farm. The system worked very well, because that crop of grandchildren grew up and produced six master’s degrees and three doctoral degrees. The one grandchild who did not get at least a master’s degree got his bachelor’s degree and became an air traffic controller."

-Read Boles, President of Texas Tamale Company

Help Support Texas Tamale Company’s Passion for Literacy