For generations, summer has offered young readers an invitation: to follow their curiosity beyond the classroom, discover unfamiliar worlds, and find the book they cannot put down.
But as elementary school students head into summer vacation, millions still face barriers to reading, from learning differences to limited access to books in their first language, or simply not seeing themselves and their interests reflected in the books available to them. At the same time, artificial intelligence and new publishing models are expanding how students engage with stories, and challenging long-held assumptions about what a book can be and who gets to create one.
From adapting literature for individual learners to expanding kids’ vocabulary with popular music, these Harvard Innovation Labs ventures are building toward a future in which summer is an opportunity for many more students to foster a love of reading.
Adapting Every Book for Every Learner
A classroom can place the same book in every student’s hands, but that does not mean every student has been given equal access to its contents.
Some are learning English, while others have dyslexia, read below grade level, or need additional support to navigate unfamiliar vocabulary and complex sentences. When the text remains fixed, students who struggle to read it can be excluded from the conversation before it begins.
Ethan Pierce (Harvard College ’15), struggled to read until he was older because of a learning disability. He founded Adaptive Reader to adapt every book for every child, ensuring the next generation would have more effective ways of learning to read than he did.
Adaptive Reader uses a combination of artificial intelligence and human review to transform books into personalized learning experiences, offering adaptations across reading levels and languages alongside tools such as audio support, side-by-side translations, and print-on-demand editions. Crucially, students retain access to the original text as they build the skills needed to read it independently.
The model challenges a longstanding assumption in education: that rigor comes from giving every student identical material. Adaptive Reader proposes that rigor can instead mean helping every student engage deeply with the same ideas, even when the path toward understanding them looks different.
Building Vocabulary Through the Music Students Already Love
Students encounter language constantly outside the classroom. They hear metaphors, wordplay, symbolism, and unfamiliar vocabulary in the songs they memorize and replay, often without recognizing that the language of popular music can also become a foundation for academic learning.
Rhymes with Reason turns that familiarity into a literacy tool. Its learning platform helps students build vocabulary and reading skills by showing how important English words appear in widely known music lyrics. Through curated playlists and skill-building activities, students can learn words ranging from foundational vocabulary to terms associated with college preparation, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy.
The approach begins with cultural relevance. Rather than asking students to leave their interests at the classroom door, Rhymes with Reason treats those interests as evidence of their existing ability to interpret language and retain complex information. The platform then connects those abilities to academic skills that can influence performance across subjects.
For students who have come to view reading instruction as disconnected from their lives, recognition can become a powerful source of motivation. Rhymes with Reason demonstrates that the distance between popular culture and the classroom may not be a barrier to overcome, but a bridge waiting to be used.
Creating Stories Children Want to Read
Giving a child a book is not the same as giving them a reason to open it. For young readers, the ability to see themselves inside a story can determine whether reading feels like an obligation or the beginning of an adventure.
Hairiette of Harlem is built around that focus. The children’s franchise follows Hairiette, an impatient seven-year-old from Harlem, and her magical friends Charlie the Comb and Barbara the Barrette. Across books, educational resources, videos, and live experiences, the venture uses character-driven storytelling to motivate children under 11 to read, learn, and embrace who they are.
Each element of the experience is designed to sustain engagement. Chapters end with cliffhangers, stories introduce new adventures, and hidden words encourage children to inspect each book closely. Through programs such as Nana’s Nook, which invites grandparents and grandchildren to read and create memories together, Hairiette also places literacy inside relationships that extend beyond the classroom.
Hairiette of Harlem gives young readers a character whose hair, community, and imagination are sources of possibility. In doing so, it transforms reading from an exercise a child is asked to complete into a world they are eager to return to.
Identifying Struggling Readers Before They Fall Further Behind
By the time a student’s reading difficulty becomes visible in the classroom, the gap may already have widened. Teachers are often asked to identify who needs support, monitor progress, and tailor instruction across an entire class, all while working within the limits of competing student needs.
Readlee was designed to make these interventions more responsive. The venture helps educators identify struggling readers, track student progress, and automate differentiated scaffolding, giving teachers clearer insight into where students are getting stuck and what kind of support may help them move forward.
In 2023, Readlee was acquired by Paper, an educational support platform, and became Paper Reading. The acquisition expanded Readlee’s reach by integrating its AI and speech-recognition technology into a broader system used by students nationwide.
Readlee reflects a broader shift in the future of reading education. The goal is not to replace a teacher’s judgment, but to strengthen it with timely information and practical support.
Together, these ventures illustrate that empowering the next generation requires more than producing new books or developing new technology. It requires removing the barriers that prevent people from accessing stories, creating reasons for reluctant readers to begin, expanding who can recognize themselves in literature, and supporting teachers in the classroom.
Creating Bilingual Stories Children Can Grow Into
Learning a new language is rarely separate from learning how to belong. For young readers navigating more than one language at home, at school, or across generations, stories can become a bridge between what they already know and what they are ready to practice next.
Blossom is built around that possibility. The bilingual eReader mobile app offers a library of custom, curriculum-aligned storybooks that allow readers to move through stories in two languages at once. Through its Bi-Lingual Story Switching Method, Blossom blends text and audio in different ratios of a child’s heritage language and the second language they are learning, helping readers build comprehension without leaving familiar language behind.
Each element of the experience is designed to make bilingual learning feel active and shared. Students can read original children’s books aligned with Common Core Math and Next Generation Science Standards, while discussion prompts and hands-on activities extend the experience beyond the screen. Teachers, parents, and families are invited into the same learning process, turning storytime into a home-school connection.
Building Libraries Around Hope
For many children, access to books is not only a matter of literacy, but of possibility. A library can become one of the first places where young readers encounter worlds beyond their immediate surroundings, develop confidence in their own voices, and begin to imagine futures larger than circumstance.
The Hope Library Project is built around that belief. Based in Lagos, Nigeria, the initiative partners with leaders underprivileged communities to create spaces where access to reading can become part of a broader commitment to care, learning, and opportunity.
The project grows out of Stories of Home, which shares and preserves inspiring life stories of faith, resilience, healing, hope, and triumph from Africans around the world. That connection gives The Hope Library Project a distinct foundation: Its libraries are not only collections of books, but extensions of a storytelling mission rooted in dignity, memory, and communal strength.
