Since 2000, the Friends of the Library have funded this gift book program to encourage early literacy and a love of books and reading. Once each year, (currently during January and February) volunteers from the Friends and Library District staff visit all Head Start classrooms in Alachua County to share the year's featured book and give each child a copy of the book to take home to help build their personal libraries. Over the life of this program, we have provided close to 20,000 books to children in our community. But the impact of this program doesn't stop with the Head Start student, as illustrated by the following story from a previous year's program:
"The afternoon of the program, one mother and her Head Start student came in (to the library) with his three siblings to get library cards and to check out all the "Daisy" books we had on the shelves. The whole family loved the book and that child was so proud to share it with his brothers and sisters."