Start Lighthouse

We were very grateful to welcome Angie Kang, author and illustrator of Our Lake, to our Literacy Hub at PS 161. Through a hopeful and joyous recounting of her personal story and connection to the arts, Angie brought excitement and passion to her visit, inspiring students to create their own drawings using simple figures and shapes. 

Her positive energy and powerful voice opened a door into the creative world, and students concluded the day with a newfound excitement for their own artistic passions. 

Each student received a signed copy of Our Lake to take home for their home library. 

Many thanks, Angie!

Our Literary Adventures program brings mobile literacy experiences to schools across New York City, creating joyful opportunities for students to connect with books, authors, and one another.

We had the honor of welcoming author and illustrator Shauna Grant to PS 23 in Brooklyn. Through her interactive workshops, she inspired students to tap into their creativity, share their voices, and see themselves reflected in the stories they read. Every child went home with a signed copy of her book to add to their home library and continue their reading journey.

We are deeply grateful to for their continued support in helping us make experiences like this possible and for championing literacy and representation for all students.

At our PS/MS 5 Literacy Hub, students read Harlem Grown by Tony Hillery and learned how one person’s vision turned an abandoned lot into a thriving garden. Ines, who leads our Literacy Hub at PS/MS 5, guided students as they reflected on what it means to create change within their own community and wrote letters to Mr. Hillery sharing their dreams for gardens across the Bronx.

Soon after, those dreams took root. Tony Hillery visited the Literacy Hub to meet the students and share his story. Then, Ines brought them to visit one of Harlem Grown’s farms, where they saw firsthand what happens when a seed of an idea grows into something that nourishes an entire neighborhood.

Through this experience, students discovered that reading can spark action, and that the power of a story can inspire real change.

We took our students at PS/MS 5 to visit our incredible partner Macmillan Publishers, and it was such an inspiring day. Students went behind the scenes to see how books are made, discovered the many careers in publishing, and each took home a new favorite book to continue their love of reading.

This visit felt full circle. In 2022, Macmillan believed in us with an $84,000 investment that shaped the trajectory of Start Lighthouse. Since then, we have welcomed their authors into our Literacy Hubs, partnered with their team, and shared their titles with thousands of Bronx students.

We are so grateful for this partnership and the inspiration it continues to bring to our students.