SBF@Schools Elementary Style

The SBF@Schools program brings fiction and non-fiction authors into local middle schools, high schools and colleges. What began as a gift to older students in 2010, became a call for engagement with younger students in elementary schools. In an effort to address that need, we launched SBF@Elementary Schools. For the pilot program, we visited five local Title I schools with two children’s authors who reflected the diversity of the student body. Teacher feedback indicated an interest in a visit from an author and an illustrator. Many students expressed curiosity around the artwork in the books.

Enter Rashad Doucet, author and illustrator of the contemporary graphic novel, Art Club. Rashad’s childhood inspired Dale Donovan, Art Club’s protagonist’s plan to start an afterschool art club despite the messaging from his family that art will get you nowhere in life. Rashad visited the second and third graders at Juliette Low on Friday, September 19, 2025. According to Juliette Low Elementary School principal Evanita Wallace-Lewis, “Literacy is a marker of what we do when we are able to have someone to come into the school, share their love of literacy, writing and being an illustrator. It helps our children see they can do that. It creates in them that love we want for them to have for literacy.”

On Tuesday, September 16th and 17th, Antwan Eady visited second and third graders at South West Elementary and Pooler Elementary schools, respectively with his book Nigel and the Moon. In Antwan’s book Nigel finds the courage to tell his peers with shinning confidence during career week his dreams of one day becoming a dancer, astronaut and superhero.

With a grant from the City of Savannah, the Savannah Book Festival purchased copies of books signed by Rashad and Antwan for students to inspire an early love of reading.