Libraries For All

Meet Emily Cimarossa in Jackson County

Emily worked with local community resources to add adaptive literature books to the library collections for students in her district’s middle and high schools

“I have a 14 year old daughter with special needs. When she transitioned to middle school she taught me that there were only higher level chapter books in her new library. By watching her visit the library and pull book after book from the shelf and then look at it and shove it back in I realized they had nothing to offer the kids that were in middle school who read on an elementary level. I reached out to a teacher at her school and learned that if she wanted her sped kiddos to check out books she had to schedule a field trip to one of the elementary schools or the local library! I realized then that something needed to change. We needed adaptive sections in our two middle and two high schools where kids could check out books that they could read, that were new, and were exciting to them. I had lots of people tell me this was a great idea but I had zero funding. I spent months applying for grants and collaborating with my community and was able to raise around $8,000 for this project! Over the last year I visited each classroom that had students who would be checking out these books to ask the students what kind of books they wanted on the shelves. Working together with each of the school librarians we now have a bookshelf full of brand new books that they can check out out our middle and high schools. It has been very rewarding to see the kids reading these books! We now have ‘Libraries for All’.”

Speaking Up for Every Child, Collaborating