Amplify Young Authors with Humanities Amped’s Book Project!

Humanities Amped’s Freshman Seminar Children’s Book Project provides Baton Rouge public school students with the transformative opportunity to create, publish, and share original children’s books focused on overcoming challenges. Throughout this collaborative project students at a high-needs high school develop crucial skills in communication, literacy, and resilience. Through your investment, at the conclusion of the project students will get to see their hard work physicalized in the form of a printed book, a unique opportunity to hold their success in their hands. The students will then get to experience the direct impact of their work when they present their books to their families and community members at Family Literacy Night and read their books to local students on an elementary school book tour.

Join us in creating meaningful, joyful learning experiences that support literacy and connect generations through storytelling.

Why this Project Matters

The Freshman Seminar Children’s Book Project invites over 70 students in 6 class sections at Tara High School (69% Black, 23% Hispanic; 22% English Language Learners; 100% Title I population) to engage deeply with literacy, creativity, and communication through the active creation of a meaningful product. When students’ voices, concerns, and interests are not considered an important part of what happens in classes, they are taught to feel that they don’t matter and that school doesn’t matter. Humanities Amped directly addresses the prevalent issue of school disconnectedness through civically-engaged project-based learning.

While the final product in project-based learning matters, what matters more is what the students learn through the process about collaborative teamwork, time management, persistence, and their own identities. At the Family Literacy Night showcase and elementary school book tour, which follow the project’s conclusion, the student authors have the chance to see themselves as writers and creators, capable of creating work worth celebrating in the world beyond their classroom.

This project is about more than books—it’s an investment in our students’ future, their community, and a school culture that values every voice.

Project Examples

You can view project examples on our website.

Project Funding Levels

$2000 - Sponsor a Classroom: provide printed books, project-based learning facilitation, event support, and a field trip for Amped students to share their books with local elementary school students

$20 - Print 3 student-created books

$50 - Print student-created books for a whole team

$100 - Support a student team’s presentation table at Family Literacy Night

If we exceed our $5,000 goal, we’ll print additional books to share with the community and increase the reach of our reading field trips.

About Humanities Amped

Since 2014, Humanities Amped has worked in Baton Rouge public schools to make learning meaningful for marginalized youth by connecting academic standards to creativity, problem-solving, and social responsibility. In residence at Tara High School, we address high rates of school disconnection among teens through an ecosystem of supports and interventions. Four years of data show that Humanities Amped students graduate at a rate 30% higher than their peers, underscoring the lasting impact of empowering students to see themselves as change-makers in their own lives and communities.

Student Testimonials

“We learned communication skills. We learned how to work together with people, we learned how to collaborate, put our minds together to produce a product that was good. The people that we were walking in as and the people that we were walking out as were the same person, just more mature and evolved.”

-Amped Freshman, 2023

"What I learned in the process of this project was collaboration and mind blowing techniques of brainstorming. And how essentially we all came together and finished our project using teamwork and respecting each other."

-Amped Freshman, 2023

“The book project was the most hardest thing because everybody had their little ideas and it was like, ‘No, I want to do this,’ ‘No, I want to do this.’ But at one point it was just like the best thing that could ever bring us together as a good, big family, because it was like, ‘Ooh, yeah, that’s smart!’ At one point we all was like, ‘Oh yeah, we should do this’ and we came up with this big good project and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we actually did this, y’all. We made it through it.’ Because the first part, it was just like, oh my gosh, I don’t want to do this no more. And then at the end when the book finally came out it was like, oh my gosh, yay!"

-Amped Freshman, 2024

“I liked the characters, I liked the visuals. I like the fact that I could’ve said, ‘Yeah, I made this book with my group.’ And my mom also came and saw the book, so I liked that.”

-Amped Freshman, 2024

Learn more about Humanities Amped and our mission on our wesbite.

Read more about the children’s book project on our spotlights page.

Make a difference with us today by supporting students in sharing their voices and stories—one book at a time.