About

So I went from book-indifferent to book-loving those few months of school detention in the library.  The magic started with Leonard Kessler’s “Here Comes the Strikeout!” and went full out fanatic when I happened upon Anna Sewell’s “Black Beauty” shortly thereafter.

Now, I’m an empty-nest mother who’s seen her half-Filipino, half-Mexican children grow into young adults who have their own love of the literary: one loves non-fiction, one loves the classics like Moby Dick, and the first will read any genre if it caught his attention.

Bookish Bovine’s main mission is to grow kids’ minds, primarily through getting them to read and write more.

Why?

Two main reasons: One, being that I believe reading and writing are primarily solitary acts that take time, effort and imagination to do. It’s like a well-tilled and fertilized bed, perfect for bearing the fruits and flowers of knowledge.

Two, the City of Fort Worth, Texas has (had???) a program called Read Fort Worth, where they developed a program centered around research data (Early Warning, a KIDS COUNT special report, February 2, 2013, by the Annie E. Casey Foundation), that says reading well by 3rd grade impacts the future ‘success’ of kids. Success being academic success, high school graduation, and workforce achievement.

The research also says reading proficiency for students either in low-income families or children of color was unacceptably low. According to the Read Fort Worth website, as of March 2023, the Fort Worth 3rd grade literacy rate is currently 24%, with a COVID slide, since 2019, of -8%.

Edit: As of January 21, 2024, I don’t know what happened to the website for Read Fort Worth. For the past couple months, it’s been giving me the dreaded 404 page not found error, but now it leads to some random teen reading website, which I think someone co-opted due to opportunity. Read Fort Worth was Mayor Betsy Price’s brainchild, so maybe when she left mayorship, maybe it went, too? I haven’t found any update on it really. If anybody knows what happened, please send me an email.

However, the data still stands. As a mother and a bibliophile, I am more than alarmed. For the love of books, for the love of my community, and for the love of children everywhere, I want to do something to help alleviate this epidemic. So I created Bookish Bovine, a podcast for parents and their 5-8 year-olds to hopefully fall in love with, or stay in love with reading, and hopefully create their own stories!

Lastly, it is my intention to apply some proceeds from the podcast to create $500 reading and writing scholarships to two students each year in a Fort Worth Independent School District elementary school.

Thanks for reading and let’s join together to grow kids’ minds by reading and writing more!