We are excited to announce our partnership with Barbershop Books, which will provide more families within the 5D Media network with access to another useful educational resource at no cost.

The first program in this partnership is a virtual 3-week summer literacy program for young black and brown boys age 5-8 that live in New York City.  The Reading So Lit program is led by high-performing Black and Brown high schoolers and managed by New York State Certified Teachers. For  additional information and to register click here. Remember to mention 5D Media to waive the program fee.

Barbershop Books was founded by Alvin Irby, who has taught kindergarten and first grade, served as Education Director at the Boys’ Club of New York, and sparked a national movement to promote reading for nearly 2 decades. Irby’s popular TED Talk “How to inspire every child to be a lifelong reader” has been viewed over 1 million times, and Barbershop Books has grown into an award-winning literacy program that inspires Black boys and other vulnerable children to read for fun. Today in the U.S., more than 82% of Black and Brown fourth-graders can not read at grade level, and the Reading So Lit program was created to address this.