Club promotes literacy through advocacy, community service or simply reading
By Skylar Laird
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — When Kate Selvitelli started the Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization chapter at her Charleston County high school, the book club had just three members: Selvitelli and her two best friends.
Two years later, with the help of some public speaking and homemade brownies, the chapter has grown to more than 50 students at Academic Magnet High School, making it the largest of the seven chapters across the state.
The group, which started in Beaufort County four years ago, has gotten local and national attention for pushing back against the removal of books from school libraries, but its goal is more broadly to promote literacy, whether that means advocating to keep books on school library shelves, volunteering to read to toddlers, or simply showing up to discuss books, said Selvitelli and other club members.
“It’s not like you have to be out there fighting banned books,” said Selvitelli, a high school senior. “We’re going to make friends, we’re going to meet up once a week, and anyone can join, even if you don’t agree with all of our political stuff.”
The number of students in each chapter varies. While Selvitelli has recruited around 50 students, the Beaufort chapter has around 20 students, and Greenville has about 15. Columbia’s chapter at Spring Valley High School in Richland 2 is starting from the ground up after all its members graduated, said recent graduate Elliot Naddell.
The group, which exists only in South Carolina, started as a book club. A then-student in Beaufort County wanted to discuss books with classmates that they might not normally choose for themselves or get assigned in class. Two years later, the group’s focus expanded when two parents challenged 97 books in the Beaufort County School District’s libraries, members said.
DAYLO members showed up to school board meetings to ask that books remain on the shelves. After temporarily removing all 97, the board eventually returned all but five of the books to school libraries. With the approval of a state-level regulation in February 2024 barring schools from carrying books that contain sexual content, the club’s advocacy work expanded across the Palmetto State, members said.
The club’s advocacy has thrust it into the spotlight, including becoming the focus of a feature-length documentary and earning Selvitelli an award from the National Education Association. But the club is not just an advocacy organization, members said. Nor is it an ordinary book club, said Emily Alaia, president of the chapter at Battery Creek High School in Beaufort.
“I think people misconstrue it as a boring book club where everybody just talks about the book and has to write book reports about it,” said Alaia, a junior. “I wish that they would come sit in and listen to the conversation and hear how meaningful it is.”
Advocacy
When the state Board of Education met to approve a regulation barring “sexual conduct” from school books in February 2024, DAYLO members were there to voice their opposition.
“Books with inclusive representation have always been my favorites because they let me experience what it’s like to be in other people’s shoes,” Selvitelli said during public comment. “I would not be the supportive, caring, learned person I am today without these books or my excellent teachers and librarians.”
The board unanimously approved the regulation, saying they wanted to make sure the books offered in schools are age-appropriate and create an appeals process for parents who disagreed with a school district’s decision to keep a certain book on library shelves. The regulation automatically took effect in June 2024.
School librarians have been required to remove 21 books since then because of depictions of explicit sexual conduct. Six other books, including classics such as “1984” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” have been allowed to stay, one (“Crank”) with the caveat that students get parental permission to read it.
The board hasn’t voted on a potential removal since May, when board members asked the Beaufort County School District to revisit its decisions with the added context of the regulation, following a meeting where board members questioned the regulation they put in place.
Getting up in front of rooms full of adults and addressing the school boards, whether at a state or local level, was nerve-wracking at first, Selvitelli said. She doesn’t mind public speaking, but at 17 years old, she’s often one of the youngest people in the room. Even when it seems intimidating, though, students should speak up about issues that affect them, she said.
“None of us can vote yet,” Selvitelli said. “We can’t make any of these decisions. We’re just there, speaking our voices, using our education, and I think it’s really important (for adults) to see the next generation being like, ‘Hey, guys, we’re watching. We know what’s happening.’”
Removing books from shelves goes against DAYLO’s pro-literacy goal, members said. The clubs have chosen several of the removed books as monthly reads, including “All Boys are Blue,” a series of essays about author George M. Johnson’s experience growing up a gay Black man, and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” a coming-of-age book about an introverted teen’s freshman year of high school.
In Beaufort, the Battery Creek High School chapter of DAYLO finished “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” a week before the Board of Education voted to remove it from shelves, Alaia said. The book resonated with Alaia, and she imagined it would mean even more to students struggling with similar anxieties as the main character, she said.
“It’s just really frustrating,” Alaia said. “Reading the books and understanding how much of an impact that they had on me, I can’t imagine what they would do for other kids.”
Community service
DAYLO’s mission of promoting literacy goes beyond students’ schools, members said. A key part of the club is giving back to the community in a way that encourages reading.
On the first Saturday of each month, DAYLO members put out blankets, books and teddy bears at the Port Royal Farmers Market. Volunteers read stories to children and their families, and children sometimes go home with free, donated books.
The teddy bear picnic draws volunteers from across the state, but chapters can choose their own community service projects.
Academic Magnet High School, for instance, collects books to donate to other schools in the area, along with participating in the teddy bear picnics, Selvitelli said.
Over the summer, members of the Greenville High School chapter opened a Little Free Library, a small box where people can take or leave books as needed, outside Pendleton Place, an emergency shelter for children entering foster care, said Harper Cridland-Hughes, a junior and the chapter’s president. The chapter is planning a book drive to keep the library stocked, she said.
As someone who didn’t enjoy reading growing up, Alaia said she supports any chance to get a book in front of a person. She learned to love reading only by doing it as often as possible, and she wants other people to have that experience, she said.
“I think that’s something everyone should try, is to pick up a book, read it and grow empathy from it,” Alaia said.
Building life skills
As Alaia worried over a big presentation in English class, she thought back to all the times she had spoken in front of her DAYLO club. If Alaia, a self-described introvert who generally prefers science and math classes, could talk about books in front of a book club, certainly she could do the same in front of a class, she thought.
“I was just kind of like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ like, ‘I’m really doing this,’” Alaia said. “I’m putting myself out there, and it was really because of DAYLO.”
As much as the club focuses on reading books, it’s also about building life skills, such as confidence and empathy, students said.
Much of that comes from reading books that reflect different experiences than what might have happened in a student’s life. How each chapter selects books varies — Selvitelli’s club has a different student choose each month, while a chapter in Greenville County votes on its books — but they all must represent some perspective not every student shares, students said.
That doesn’t always mean choosing books removed from school libraries.
Students at Battle High School read “The Hate U Give,” which follows a 16-year-old girl who lives in a poor neighborhood but attends a wealthy prep school after a police officer shoots and kills her childhood friend.
Greenville High School’s DAYLO chapter started with Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” first published in 1963, about a young woman whose mental health suffers under the pressures of adulthood, to learn more about mental health, Cridland-Hughes said. The book club followed it up with the 2017 novel “They Both Die at the End,” to contrast a more modern take on mental health, she said.
Those types of books are important for students who might be facing similar issues to recognize their own struggles, Cridland-Hughes said. And if students can’t relate to the books, “you can see a perspective of what (others) are going through and use that in real life to just be more considerate of people around you,” she said.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau. S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
