As a former elementary school teacher and an avid reader, I feel very strongly that all children be given the opportunity to strengthen their literacy skills and develop a love of books.

I’m thrilled that I had two opportunities to support literacy causes at the Romance Writers of America National Conference (Washington DC, July 2009).

The first event was the “Readers for Life Literacy Autographing.” All proceeds went to ProLiteracy.

The second event was a truly romance writer style party and signing, hosted by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tam, hosts of the fabulous blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and authors of the wonderful book Beyond Heaving Bosoms. Surprised to see the words “bitches” and “bosoms” in a paragraph about literacy causes? Well, scoff not. All proceeds (and there were a lot) went to First Book.

Here is a list of more organizations that are devoted to helping children learn to read:

NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/ywp

One Laptop Per Child

http://laptop.org/en/

Literacy Assistance Center

http://www.lacnyc.org/

Literacy Connections

http://www.literacyconnections.com/Organizations.php

If you know of organizations that I have not included on this list, please email me at melina@melinakantor.com and I’ll add your link.  Thank you!