The California State Library’s Immigrant Alliance Project gave the Santa Maria Public Library System a $7,500 grant to purchase bilingual children’s books for the main library and all branch library locations. The books will feature printed text in both Spanish and English, to help meet the needs of families in various local communities.
The library plans to purchase books geared to children in pre-Kindergarten through the sixth-grade to help promote family reading, literacy, and language skills. As many as 58 percent of Santa Maria residents speak Spanish at home; in Guadalupe and Cuyama, as many as 64 percent of residents speak Spanish in their home, according to a release from the library.
The bilingual English/Spanish books will be purchased for public libraries in Santa Maria, Guadalupe, Cuyama, Los Alamos, and Orcutt and will be available to check out by the end of August.
“Receiving this funding will be a boon for the communities we serve,” Dawn Jackson, Librarian III overseeing Youth and Branch services, said in a press release. “Providing access to updated materials written in a Spanish/English format is especially important to patrons who are learning English, as well as being helpful to those who are learning Spanish.”
