The real question is how to drive a sustainable supply of books to the developing world's children. We do it with Reading Challenge Grants. We challenge parents to begin investing in books by promising to multiply what they give by 5 in the first year, by 4 in the second year, by 3 in the third year, by 2 in the fourth year and by 1 in the fifth year until, after 5 years, we have a full mini-library in every classroom.

These parents often support their entire families on less than $2 a day, but they are rising to the challenge. They organize around the incentive and pledge between $1.25 and $2.50 per child for books, sometimes in 2 installments. You really should see parents lining up to provide a thumbprint as their promise to give so their children can have books! They may not know how to read or write themselves, but they desperately want their children to be literate.

We reinforce this new culture of parental investment in books by training parents in library management, replacing books as they age and organizing to buy new books at the lowest cost possible. Our communities are actually excited about "owning" responsibility for the classroom libraries at the end of 5 years.

It is really hard not to fill these classrooms with books right away, but we believe our approach will produce a more sustainable culture of reading and literacy.

And, by the way, the children take the books home on the weekends, and manage their own inventory system to keep track of the books. The books belong to the kids, and we find that kids don't mess with other kids stuff!