PoWeR! Book Bags marks 10 years of boosting local literacy

Families in Grand Traverse County who cannot easily keep books at home have relied on PoWeR! Book Bags for a decade now, and the scale of that work shows how much literacy support still has to happen outside the classroom. The Traverse City nonprofit says it has distributed more than 740,000 books and more than 118,000 PoWeR! Literacy Tool Bags since 2016, reaching more than 20,000 children across Northern Lower Michigan while the region still wrestles with reading gaps that show up long before third grade.

Founded by Kara Murphy Gregory, PoWeR! Book Bags has built its model around more than just handing out books. The organization says its materials are designed to help children and families play, write and read together, with bag contents that can include finger puppets, crayons, writing booklets, bookmarks and age-appropriate books. Those materials are distributed through schools, food and baby pantries, health departments, Early Head Start, Head Start, child care sites, preschools, camps and summer programs.

Gregory, who is listed by the organization as founder, president and executive director, has a Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Family and Child Ecology, with an emphasis on child development, social-emotional development, literacy, play and early childhood education. That research background helps explain the nonprofit’s focus on early access and family engagement, especially in households where books may be expensive or hard to come by.

The group’s first program, the Original Pantry Project, began in 2016 and now has 14 participating sites. Its summer programs have been expanding since 2017, and its footprint now reaches more than 120 sites in 27 counties, while other descriptions place it across 29 counties. The organization’s reach extends well beyond Traverse City into places such as Leelanau County, Benzie County, Antrim County and Kalkaska County, part of a regional network that has grown as schools, volunteers and donors kept it moving.

The growth is clear when measured against earlier milestones. A 2023 local report said PoWeR! Book Bags had distributed 400,000 books and 72,000 literacy bags at that point, and a January 2025 feature put the book total at more than 600,000. In 2025, another report on northwest Michigan literacy efforts said more than 4,200 children were receiving free books monthly and that Michigan’s third-grade reading proficiency had fallen below 40%, a reminder that the need for community literacy support has not gone away as the program has expanded.