Reopen Library & Bookstore Serving Shelter Kids

(Oakland CA 2024

Pratum Literacy Services was established in 2003 to serve bay area kids living in homeless shelters and group homes by bringing them thousands of free books, installing shelter/group home libraries, building afterschool libraries, and with volunteers and interns we’ve held hundreds of literacy events of all kinds such as book clubs, poetry slams, writing workshops and book making, all for children living at the very edge of society.

Then on April 4th 2020 I suffered an unfortunate accident which required multiple surgeries and two years of rehabilitation therapy and some unavoidable debts were incurred, finally I'm back in action and distributing many hundreds of books and tutoring and having fun with the kids. And now working hard to reopen my old Ross Library with 14,000 books and 40-50 boxes of games.

Everything is mainly funded through my book businesses, my literacy contracts with school districts, and Title 1 funds (federal monies earmarked for at risk students k-12, but your donations and book purchases are essential as well. These are the debts I'm slowly paying off:

• $12,000 loans incurred while recuperating.

• $3,200 book-storage

My medical bills are now paid.

Anybody donating will get photos of the kids going wild in the library, and they will go wild believe me!

If you can’t donate maybe buy some books from my catalogs of old philosophical books, they provide crucial funds.

“In life the only thing you absolutely have to know is the location of the library".

Albert Einstein.

Above my old literacy center at Kid Street in Santa Rosa c.2005, a school I helped found serving shelter & foster kids but mainly kids in the criminal justice system, the school is still going strong. Here some kids are arguing over who "gets" to vacuum, because of course everybody wants to vacuum!

Kids' books should be properly displayed!

When I opened in Ross 2011

Half of my old Oakland warehouse, c.2004

Natural history studies (that's a creek outside).

My old Richmond center. In this photo the loft is still unfinished.

Without any agenda or slant the library presents something from all branches of knowledge, compiled and curated over three decades. Recently I paid off or negotiated most debts incurred while recuperating, once I reopen the bookshop I'll be able to pay the rest with book sales.

How I got started. After decades as a bookseller I knew how easy it was to get good books, then about 28 years ago I volunteered to tutor homeless kids and eventually learned that the vast majority of family shelters had NO books at all! NO adult books, NO kid books, not even an old Readers’ Digest or National Geographic or newspapers or even used coloring books for the little ones, but all had video games and big screen TV’s. It was hard to believe, no books anywhere, that's when I established Pratum Literacy Services (2003).

My number one literacy secret? Book Ownership, yet most poor kids have few if any, and like I said, there are NONE in the shelters and group homes.

Even at ‘The Henry’, (see below) a scary seven-story building housing about 100 kids every night, even there was not a single book, (believe me I looked). The truth is most shelter & group-home kids have never owned a book before, some get so excited when I give them a book--or sometimes a backpack full of books--that many kids are incredulous, "Todd you mean I can actually have this book? You mean it's mine to keep?" That’s when I started having big book giveaways and building serious shelter libraries, all new and carefully chosen. It was pretty dang exciting in those early days!

The 'Henry', downtown Oakland.

At that time the Henry was the largest family shelter in Oakland, photos here and I spent years there. Once I was assigned to the "the baby room" which was in the basement, usually with a dozen or so infants and toddlers but not a single board book, not even crayons and paper, yet a huge TV was on all the time.

Tutoring in our library at the Henry, with volunteer assistants.

The same absence of books was true in the dozens of foster group homes I tutored in. A 'group home' by the way is legally six or more kids with no family. About this time I started building my 'big' library which I originally rented out. It officially opened in 2010 with 14,000 books.

Literacy is a beautiful way out of the trap.

We all know the power of literacy, now combine that with book ownership and supported with regular book events and you’ve got a real start in life! And that’s what I provide and it works.

If ‘leaders are readers’, and ‘knowledge is power’, and if homeless kids have no books and the least power of us all, then they deserve literacy & books more than anyone. I bring them the highest quality books, most are donated but some special books I buy. For some of the big libraries I bring books like the latest Encyclopedia Britannica, the Times Atlas of the World (the large folio edition), large indestructible chess sets, leather-bound journals, Merriam-Webster and other reference works etc., magnificent books few have ever seen.

It's a lot of fun and I feel privileged to be a part of their lives.

Free books with supportive programs work, really!

We all wonder what is a good effective way to help these kid, literacy is my answer, if you’re not a good reader chances of success are few, then imagine you live in a dingy shelter with illiterate parents and drug dealing all around, with no school help, no books, and nobody to model good reading habits, what are your chances then? Is a college degree even possible? Well statistically, even one single stay in a shelter or group home means you have a 1% - 3% chance of completing a four-year degree. Yet how many kids have told me they want to be a doctor (many), a scientist or a teacher? Or like the little kid who explained to me that he and his mother wanted to open a "real shelter", that was his goal.

The first homeless kids I ever knew, c.1996, why that girl always pulled her eyes down like that I'll never know but she was consistent in every photo!

More literacy history here

Past & present supporters...

Congresswoman Barbara Lee

Honorable Ronald V. Dellums

Sw. Nijananda Bharati (Dr.John Whitacre MD)

Dr. John C. Carson II MD

Ann Arnold & Ian Jackson

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Hans Thomas Hakl

Joscelyn Godwin

Jacques Vallee

Ralph Metzner

Robert Bly

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Anne Beneventi, Tessellations School

Julia Berkowitz

Brian Cotnoir

Corinne Fargo

Ellen Ford

Alisa Moore

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Acorn Afterschool, Kimberly Vergez

Alameda Child Custody Services

Bananas Bunch Family Support

East Bay Children’s Book Project, Ann Katz

Education Revolution Magazine, Jerry Mintz & AERO

Kid Street Theater, Linda Conklin

McAuley Adolescent Psychiatric Unit

Oakland Family Court, CASA Program

Oakland Public Library, Teen Desk

Oakland Unified School District, Transitional Students office

…and numerous publishers & fellow booksellers who donated many thousands of books over the years

Another way to help, buy a book, here is my latest catalog, No.124, books on philosophy and religion. My catalogs help pay the library bills.

Here are some letters of recommendation.