Words at Play Vocabulary Initiative community partners are making big news!

Jasmond "Jazz" Schoolfield, owner of Creative Image Unisex Salon on Cecil B. Moore Ave., is featured on the cover of the Spring 2017 issue of Children & Libraries, the official journal of the Association of Library Service to Children (ALSC). Sarah Stippich, Early Literacy Coordinator for the Free Library, wrote an article for the issue highlighting the work that Words at Play and the Free Library do "reaching outside the library walls." Jazz is a community advocate for early literacy and hosts two Words at Play Book Nooks in his busy barber shop.

Words at Play ended 2016 with a celebration dinner at Honickman Learning Center. It was an opportunity to recognize the families and community partners who make the program successful. All the Words at Play partners contributed fun, play-based activities to the festivities and families went home with bags filled with carefully selected books to add to their home libraries.

Thanks to the generosity of PNC Grow Up Great, Words at Play will continue to serve families in the neighborhoods surrounding Cecil B. Moore and Widener Neighborhood Libraries through 2017. The next Play Party Series will be held on the first four Saturdays in April from 11:00 a.m.-12:00.p.m. at the Cecil B. Moore Neighborhood Library. The 2017 theme, "Around the World", will continue when we explore South America through reading, talking, and playing!

Subscribe to our newsletter for more information about the program and to read about what’s going on in our North Philadelphia neighborhoods!