Although she is no longer in a classroom, a longtime educator has found numerous ways to share her love of reading.
With a nostalgic holdover from her family’s past, Lisa Gerard of Norman distributes free books to children and adults at laundromats, homeless service events, local parks, daycare centers and other locations.
Gerard, 55, founded the nonprofit Little Read Wagon to fulfill her mission to close the literacy gap often caused by poverty. And by filling her children’s Little Tykes Lil Wagon with books, Gerard is spreading the love of reading and books among community members, especially marginalized groups.
Gerard said the name of her organization came to her when she first put some of the books she had collected over 20 years of teaching into the iconic red cart her children loved when they were little. She said the first time she did it, she wanted to hand out books at a Laundry Love drive at a local laundromat.
How Little Read Wagon was founded
Gerard said she came to Norman by way of Mississippi after her husband, a meteorologist, took a job with the National Weather Center on the University of Oklahoma campus. She said her children had grown and fledged, and she had given up her 20-year career as a special education teacher in Mississippi.
Gerard said she started volunteering for Laundry Love, a nonprofit that visits local laundromats and provides community members with quarters to pay for their laundry. She said she noticed parents trying to take care of their children and do their laundry at the same time. She arrived at a local laundromat one Saturday with her little red cart full of books and began reading the children a story while her older family members did laundry.
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Gerard and her books were a success.
She said she gave away many books and went to many Laundry Love outings to hand out books, read stories to children and talk to them about reading. The former teacher said it wasn’t long before adults started asking for books, too.
Currently, Gerard and her Little Read Wagon volunteers continue to distribute books at Laundry Love locations. They also hand out books at events such as a community resource fair at The Well in Norman. Gerard said she distributes books to children at five Head Start centers in Cleveland County, and by the end of the school year, students will each receive 40 books to fill their home library.
Little Read Wagon has also partnered with the Ice Angels of Mosaic Community Church in Oklahoma City to distribute books and reading glasses as part of the Ice Angels’ homeless outreach on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month at a location south of downtown Oklahoma City.
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Other Little Read Wagon programs include #Look4ABook. Gerard and the nonprofit’s volunteers hide plastic-wrapped books in local parks and encourage anyone who finds them to take a photo of the book and post it on social media along with the program’s hashtag. Gerard said she’s found that many people like to hide books for others to find.
Little Read Wagon also offers another program called “PJs and Pages,” which provides pajamas and books to families at select Laundry Love events. Gerard said she likes to talk to parents about the importance of establishing a routine for reading stories each night.
Gerard said many people look forward to her visits, including a young man who comes to her to buy books to help him pass his GED exam. He wants to be a chef, so she gives him cookbooks, too.
Gerard said one Laundry Love customer loved to talk about reading and picked out a book every time she saw Little Read Wagon at her local laundromat. Gerard said the woman was battling cancer and her friends brought her books from the nonprofit before she eventually succumbed to the disease. Gerard said the woman’s friends told her she was happy about every book she received.
She also has people who like to get crossword and word search books from Little Read Wagon because they are trying to learn English and these books have helped them learn the language.
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Gerard may have started her literacy mission by giving people books from their own shelves, but many books distributed by Little Read Wagon are currently purchased through grants and donations. Gerard said she also goes to flea markets and thrift stores to find books to give away.
She said she would continue her mission because reading is important.
“I found a statistic from the U.S. Department of Education that says two-thirds of low-income children don’t have a single book at home,” Gerard said.
“I want to give away as many books as possible.”
To learn more
For more information about Little Read Wagon, visit https://www.littlereadwagonok.com/.
