Larry Abrams, BookSmiles

CNN Heroes 2022

In 2017, Larry Abrams, an English teacher in an under resourced high school in New Jersey, discovered that one of his students never read to her 2-year-old daughter. Abrams wanted to help them benefit from the power of reading, but he didn’t have any books on hand to offer. So, he put out a call to friends asking for gently used children’s books, and more than 1,000 came in. That was the start of his nonprofit, BookSmiles, which has since collected and distributed more than 930,000 books for kids living in book deserts.

Video: CNN Hero Larry Abrams

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