MODERN-DAY BOOKMOBILE
THE CURIOSITY CRUISER TAKES THE LIBRARY EXPERIENCE OUT INTO THE COMMUNITY.
Hear that sound? It’s not the ice cream truck coming around the corner. It’s a library on wheels. The Curiosity Cruiser, a new $250,000, 30-footlong, custom-made vehicle that promotes literacy and learning, has hit the streets.
The vehicle makes neighborhood stops to lend books like a traditional library, but is also outfitted with music and two onboard superheroes. In addition, it offers digital resources to bolster kids’ learning, gives gift books to families for their at-home collection and offers educational programming in alignment with literacy.
An initiative of the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation, the Curiosity Cruiser (curiositycruiser.com) serves low-income areas and visits communities in need.
At its inaugural stop earlier this month at Kolter Elementary, a school hit hard by Hurricane Harvey, second-grade students were each given a new book.
Research shows that having books in the home makes children stronger readers and helps them become lifelong readers, says foundation president Julie Baker Finck.
Beginning in January, the Cruiser will make the rounds to areas not served by a branch of either the Harris County Public Library or Houston Public Library systems, closing a “gap in services.”
The Curiosity Cruiser takes library resources “out in the community rather than have the community come into the library,” Finck says.
The Cruiser was born from focus groups in the communities it now serves. Those groups weighed in on everything from the color scheme of the bus to its music. Two onboard superhero mascots, Owlbotron and Northtale (acted out by staff in costumes), add excitement to the visits. Owlbotron is an owl who loves to read but doesn’t always connect well socially with others, Finck says. Northtale, a fox, is the librarian who engages him.
“Mascots can help resonate with children and connect with them in ways we humans can’t,” Finck says.
The characters help students choose books and walk them through technology on the Cruiser. A new take on the traditional bookmobile, the Cruiser is loaded with all the “vast resources that a public library has that are digital,” says Finck.
There’s a 3-D printer, robotics programs, LEGO animation and STEM resources.
“It’s not your grandma’s mobile library,” she says.
Making regular stops at affordable-housing complexes, apartment buildings and community centers, the Cruiser will host reading clubs and offer programming to get the entire family engaged in encouraging a child’s love of reading, helping children “discover the powers and gifts that are inside each of us through reading,” Finck says. There are tools to enrich writing and spark an interest in the arts, too.
Finck hopes the peppy music piped from the Cruiser as it approaches a neighborhood will become synonymous with kids getting the gift of a new book.