Save the date for the 7^th Annual FLOC Book Festival taking place on Saturday, November 16^th from 4-6 p.m. at Pepco Edison Place Gallery. FLOC’s Book Festival is a time for children and their families to celebrate reading and books! This year’s featured author is Marc Tyler Nobleman, writer of Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman. There will also be reading activities for children and parents around the theme of superheroes.

At the conclusion of the event, students and their families will be able to take home 15 free books to start or add to their personal libraries. According to a 2007 study by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 4^th graders who reported having 25 or more books at home had higher scores on reading tests than children who didn’t have that many. We hope you’ll join us for this unique event that we are sure will leave you inspired by our incredible students. You can read about last year’s book festival here.

This year, FLOC has partnered up with some of our corporate partners to host company book drives. We’d like to thank SIGAL Construction, Sedgwick LLP, The Meltzer Group, and Raffa for collecting books for FLOC students to take home. We’d also like to thank The JBG Companies for being our event sponsor. For more information about the event and sponsors, visit our website here.

For the first time, during this year’s event, we’re offering a special opportunity for FLOC partners, friends, and supporters to participate in a meet-and-greet and discussion session with a few members of the board, along with Tim Payne, FLOC’s Executive Director, and Robyn Lingo, Director of Programs. We’d love the chance to meet with you in a casual setting where Tim and Robyn will talk more about FLOC programs and current happenings. Attendees of this portion of the event will have the opportunity to hear the featured author read to the students, and then will break off for the meet-and-greet while FLOC students are enjoying of literacy-themed activities. If you’re interested in attending, please RSVP to Ellie Haga at ehaga@floc.org or 202-349-3500. We look forward to seeing you and sharing more about what your support is enabling us to do at FLOC!

(Kate Fleischer is the Development Assistant at FLOC).