Avoiding the Summer Slide: It’s Cover to Cover

From PPL Electric Utilities

It happens every summer. Around June, students leave their classrooms for a summer of fun, friends and family. For many children, their summer agendas lack the things that are most important in keeping them on track academically: books.

It’s called the “summer slide.” Thanks to PPL Electric Utilities‘ Cover to Cover reading program, more than 8,300 students in grades K-3 were able to avoid the summer slide while experiencing the joy of reading during summer vacation.

During springtime, PPL employees and the PPL Foundation donated new or gently used books, which were delivered to 25 schools throughout our 29-county service area, including to a pair of schools in the Danville Area School District. Each student was able to select four books to keep and read over the summer. In Danville, all students in kindergarten through third grade received books this past summer as part of this program. 

Cover to Cover helps children who would otherwise miss out on reading and learning opportunities in the summer. Not reading over the summer can cause these young students to fall behind as much as two grade levels by the fifth grade.

This was PPL’s fourth Cover to Cover program. Since the program started, more than 26,000 students have received books.

Scholar and author Mary Ellen Chase once noted, “There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.” We couldn’t agree more

The below news story is from WNEP and ran in early June when the books were distributed to students at the Danville Primary School.