A three-year-old isn’t likely to articulate a whole lot, but ask baby Brayan when the books come by, and he’ll tell you—in his own way.
“He says, ‘ma, books, books,’” said Yolanda, describing how her youngest child points outside when the four-door Scion hatchback slowly rumbles its way over the beaten and broken, paved road, somewhere in Valley Ford, California. “He knows the day. From the time he wakes up, he’s looking outside. I didn’t tell him they were coming right now.”
Every Friday for the last four weeks of the remaining summer, Jo Ann Kempf, Cristian Martinez and Josuep Macias, have been coming. Cramped in the back of the little Scion, they bring crates packed with books—lots of books.
For the last eight years, Kempf has been the program coordinator for the Marin County Library “Reading on the Ranches” program, a mobile summer literacy services dedicated to checking library books out to kids in rural and remote communities of Marin County. Many of the kids don’t have access to a library and without the program, they run the risk of going an entire summer without reading a single book.
According to the California Library Association, reading five books over the summer can help prevent academic learning loss.
“I can see the difference in the kids,” said Kempf, who is an instructional assistant at West Marin Elementary School in Point Reyes Station. “When school starts again in the fall, they seem to be on track.”
The majority of the students enrolled in the six-week summer-long program attend schools in the Shoreline District. Many are the sons and daughters of undocumented immigrants, who fear driving unlicensed off the ranches during the summer months. That fear is part of the reason why Kempf and her student assistants make their weekly rounds.
“It’s what the kids tell me too,” Kempf said. “Sometimes we’ll pull up to places and they’re out here in the middle of nowhere, but all the curtains are closed…and I didn’t understand that. And the kids will say, ‘Well, la migra.’”
Giving back
Every Friday morning, Cristian Martinez can shut off his alarm clock and sleep in until the tardy hour of 8 a.m. Within an hour the 15-year-old soon-to-be sophomore is starting his eight-hour workday.
“We get out here, read to little kids and give them books,” Martinez said. “Cause these types of kids out here, I don’t think they have books. It gives them something to do this summer, every Friday.”
Martinez knows those types of kids well.
Born and raised on the Stewart Ranch in Olema, Martinez was only a year old when his older sister Marta started checking books out via the program. Marta would go on to work with Kempf, delivering books over the summer and reading to children. Cristian soon followed suit, as did 12-year-old Josuep Macias, who spent many of his lunches pestering Kempf for a chance to work the summer.
The two boys work the Friday leg of the round, hitting seven ranches over the 110-mile stretch. Kempf has two other students help her with the other nine ranches on Thursdays. And though exhausting, at $12 an hour, for Martinez, it beats working his regular job.
“That’s my job: wake up and clean the barns,” said Martinez. “This smells a lot nicer than a barn.”
The 14-year-old program has roughly 600 library books in circulation. And though by this print date the program will have ended for the summer, it has left its mark.
“When they see more books coming, they’re motivated to read more,” Yolanda said of her children.
Her toddler Brayan has developed a pension for “Dora the Explorer” and “Luchador” books, while her 8-year-old son Erik opted for “Diary of a wimpy kid.”
“It helps because [Erik] kind of doesn’t want to read,” said his older seventh-grade sister Brenda, who checked out “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” “It’s helping him a lot—and me.”