Assuming they don’t get snowed out, Cortes Literacy is holding a mandatory training session for their new Rakuten Kobo e-readers today. Manda Aufochs Gillespie explained this is connected to Cortes Island’s new book club. 

 Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “This book club is a hybrid of just another community organized volunteer ‘Let’s everybody pitch in book club’ like we have seen multiple times before on Cortes. And an attempt to blend with a program that Cortes Literacy is doing with Rakuten Kobo, which brings 20 digital eReaders into our community to loan and reuse, as well as a subscription to the Kobo Plus book library. They basically saw a need in rural and remote communities. People had no access to books during COVID. Libraries shut down, community halls shut down, schools shut down, and people in these remote communities had no access to books and reading material.”