The Wonders of Books | Reading can be FUN

Books have tremendous power. Between their pages, readers can be transported to anywhere imaginable and become just about anyone…or anything. Unfortunately, many children all over the world don’t have access to books!

http://inspiremykids.com/2016/maria-keller/

TTSEN Logo

Books have tremendous power. Between their pages, readers can be transported to anywhere imaginable and become just about anyone…or anything. Unfortunately, many children all over the world don’t have access to books!

For several years now, Maria Keller, a 14-year-old girl from Minneapolis, Minnesota, has been changing that fact.

When she was 8 years old, Maria already loved reading. She also noticed that some of her classmates didn't read as much as she did. When she asked her mother why that could be, her mother said that they might not be able to afford books. Maria had never thought of this. She could not believe that some children might not have bedtime stories read to them. She became determined to change this.

With her mother’s help, Maria created Read Indeed. Read Indeed is a non-profit organization dedicated to collecting and distributing books to children in need. During the early stages of Read Indeed, Maria set the goal to collect and distribute 1 million books by the time she was 18. It didn’t take long to reach that goal!

Today, at age 14, she has collected over 1.8 million books and has shipped them to many states and countries around the world. She says, “I cannot live without books. As I continue my mission, I have learned that the number of kids who have no books are in the hundreds of millions. So I just can’t give up, even after reaching my original goal of 1 million books distributed.”

She recently set a new goal: to distribute donations to kids in need in every state in the United States, and every country in the world. She keeps track of her progress on a large map at the warehouse where they store and sort books.

Check out the inspiring video below about Maria thanks to CNN Heroes. See below to learn how you can take action to help kids in your community or around the world to become better readers!