First Book is an award-winning international nonprofit organization with a single mission: To give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. First Book has provided more than 80 million new books to children in need in thousands of communities. First Book works with existing community-based tutoring, mentoring, and family literacy programs nationwide, offering them the opportunity to select their own free books. These book grants provide a steady diet of new books to children at no cost to the child or program, thereby helping the children to build personal libraries of their very own. The children served by First Book live below the nation's poverty level, a criterion that is central to First Book's mission.