(cheerful music) - Operation Literacy Storyland at StoryCon is an interactive space that sparks creativity and supports readers, writers, and young storytellers.

Here to tell us more about it is Heather Clark and Sharon Brown.

Welcome.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much for having us.

- So tell me a little bit more about what Storyland offers at StoryCon.

- Do you wanna go with that, Sharon?

- Everything good about literacy and children.

We are offering free books.

We're gonna give away thousands of free books for children, ages three to seven.

We have 13 authors coming.

We have activities and crafts and so much fun.

We just want kids to love reading.

And what better way than meeting an author and getting to interact with them through their stories.

- And when I was reading the information about what this is about, I was like, this kind of feels like it's like the Super Bowl for literacy.

- Ooh.

- Yes.

- I like that.

- Honestly, it's the big book party, right?

So we are hoping that any family that wants to build a culture of literacy in their homes is going to come, let us help them and to help them expand their home libraries, to help them expand, get more resources.

But mainly it's a book party.

That's exactly what's gonna happen is if you come to this, and we see kids all the time as they come to these programs, we have writing conferences as well at StoryCon, but as they come to these programs, they leave on fire with excitement about books.

So that's really the goal.

- I love that, and storytelling matters for creativity, learning, and also community, right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- And StoryCon has been for ages eight and up, but now this is the first year for Storyland.

So we're starting at three years old.

We're gonna catch 'em early, right?

There's no chance they're going to leave without that initial spark of love of books.

- Right, and so this is really tailored towards pre-K through third grade.

And as these young readers come and get excited about it, we really are hoping that that will help with the literacy crisis, right, where one of the key determiners of success is for students to be on track with reading at third grade, and of course all the great teaching, all the things that we have them learn, we also wanna bring the fun and the joy.

- And it's free.

We can't, we can't.

- I love, oh my gosh.

Okay, all right, free?

I'm sold.

I'm sold.

(Sharon laughs) We've gotta get folks the information so that they can come check it out as well.

This is Storyland at StoryCon.

Information is on your screen right now.

It's February 27th and 28th.

So if you're sad after the Super Bowl, come to this free event and check this out with your kids.

It's at the Salt Palace Convention Center, and it's put on by Operation Literacy.

You can get more information at storycon.org.

And thank you so much for watching "Contact."

I'm Liz Adeola.

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