​2019 was truly magical. In only our third year as an active all volunteer organization, we doubled the number of families we had reached the prior year, putting books in the hands of 3,173 mothers of newborns through our twelve delivery partners. In only three short years we have created more than 6,500 newborn libraries and are currently on pace to add another 3,500 in the coming year. From our kick off in January 2017 we have now delivered 26,000 books and are scheduled to deliver at least 14,000 more in 2020. We generated our most significant annual surplus while […]

Former World Series Champion pitcher Kyle McClellan and his wife Bridget, who serves as Executive Director of their BraceforImpact46 Foundation, donated 150 “lightly used” children’s books for our expanding Big Brothers Big Sisters program, sparking several other young mothers “like new” book drives that have collected well over 1,000 more books so far. Their BraceforImpact46 Foundation is making a big impact for kids in Haiti and for families in need in North St. Louis. We’re glad they thought to make a big impact on Books for Newborns kids, too. […]

Nurses in NICUs in Minnesota published findings about the calming effects that colorful crocheted octupi (like the one pictured here) have upon newborns in their care. Paula – a long ago St. Louis resident who now lives in suburban Chicago and puts her considerable crocheting skills to work for several charities there — read those findings, learned about Books for Newborns and created a dozen for us to distribute to our hospital delivery partners. Though literacy is our primary focus it is only part of getting newborns off to a great start. We’re grateful to Paula for her help in […]

​Patrice was a member of our Management Committee before relocating to Texas, where she now resides with her husband and two young sons.  She continues as BFN’s volunteer Director of Development, leading our efforts to identify and apply for funding from charitable donor organizations with missions aligned with our own.  Her Masters in Social Work and impressive writing skills have helped her research and write effective proposals that have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars for kids who need books from a dozen donors.  And she’s just getting started.  We are thankful for all she has accomplished so far […]

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2020 Year in Review
2020 was a year that proved we are Stronger Together.  Year four of our all-volunteer effort to make a difference in building literacy as a foundation for children in low-income communities brought its own share of unique challenges, chief among them the pandemic and the ensuing cancellation of Oktoberfest (our major fundraising event).  But we adapted.  We figured out new ways to raise funds.  We developed new safety protocols for what we do and how we work with our partners under the “new normal”.  And we made effective use of two months of downtime during the C-virus lockdown to initiate […]

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We are so grateful to have NYT Best Selling Author Eileen Dreyer (aka Kathleen Korbel when writing romance novels) on our Advisory Board.  Her experience as a trauma nurse, love of literature and life lessons learned as a mother have all contributed to the impact she has on our success.  Plus, as you might guess from this photograph, she makes Books for Newborns’ work fun.  She introduced us to St. Louis Black Authors of Children’s Literature, used her knowledge of internet publishing and marketing  to help shape our new  web site and is still sorting literally thousands of donated kids’ […]

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Five years! After building for four, we found our place and hit our stride in 2021. From our launch as a stand-alone agency that shared books with new mothers and their children, we now recognize our place as an important conduit to and integral part of our region’s coordinated effort to make a real lasting difference on literacy. Our Newborns program sparks reading and bonding from birth to improve both mothers’ and babies’ health and to lay the base which others then build on in preschool and beyond. Our Older Siblings program provides new and repurposed “like new” books to […]

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