NORTH LAWNDALE — A nonprofit bookstore and literacy organization has gone mobile to bring free literature to more South and West side neighborhoods.
North Lawndale-based Open Books launched a traveling bookstore within a truck this month, aiming to regularly visit underserved neighborhoods. The Open Books Mobile, known informally as the “booksmobile,” is an extension of the organization’s mission “to help transform lives through the power of joy and reading,” said CEO Jennifer Steele.
The truck launched June 8 at a summer kickoff event along Douglas Boulevard near the Lawndale Pop-Up Spot.
“The booksmobile was a wonderful way for us to be able to bring more books directly to the communities that we serve,” Steele said. “Books should not feel like a luxury.”
Open Books was founded in 2006 as a bookstore chain and organization dedicated to boosting literacy and reading in underserved communities. It has given more than 1.3 million books to nearly 47,000 students since its founding.
The organization has bookstores in West Loop and Logan Square plus a pay-what-you-can bookstore locations in Pilsen and in its headquarters in North Lawndale.
Open Books provides literacy programs on the South and West sides through its community bookstores as well as through custom libraries-in-a-box, events and community partnerships. Priority neighborhoods targeted to receive programs include Pilsen, Englewood, Austin, Garfield Park and North Lawndale.
With the new mobile bookstore, Open Books can serve more neighborhoods, including McKinley Park, Back of the Yards and Gage Park. Mobile bookstore events are planned for those neighborhoods this summer.
“The booksmobile is our way to be able to start increasing our reach and serving those neighborhoods who aren’t receiving those more direct service programs. We really want to equitably share our resources with the neighborhood,” Steele said. “We will continue to prioritize North Lawndale.”
The mobile bookstore will offer free books in English and Spanish for children through adults, said Patricia Gomez, who leads the mobile program. The truck was embraced with “excitement, curiosity, imagination and creativity” at its first five community events, Gomez said.
Fewer than one in three CPS students read at grade level, according to a 2024 Illinois Policy report. Access to books is harder to come by in poorer neighborhoods, with nearly two-thirds of low-income homes lacking a book for children to read, according to a study by Scholastic. The ratio of children to books in lower-income communities is 300 to 1, according to Open Books.
To learn more about its literacy programs or where to get books, visit open-books.org.
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:
