Obama will provide access to free e-books for children from poor families

Through the efforts of Barack Obama, children from poor families in America will have access to free electronic publications of a number of leading American publishing houses. The President of the United States spoke about this by visiting the Anacostia Public Library in one of the poorest quarters of Washington. This program will be one of the factors of influence that the White House intends to respond to the recent riots in Baltimore, in which mostly black young people from the poor neighborhoods of the city took part.

The problem is actually very serious, according to the Obama administration. Jeffrey Zients, chief economic adviser, acknowledged that in 80% of low-income families, it’s not enough that children either cannot read or are seriously lagging behind, because they simply have no books at home. Perhaps the White House initiative will play a certain role in solving this problem.

In total, the White House is planning to spend $ 250 million on the program and negotiate with publishers such as CBS Corp's Simon & Schuster Inc. and News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers LLC. The free library they have created will consist of 10,000 e-books. They will be accessed through a specially developed application.

Previously, in order to ensure the technical possibility of reading e-books, the White House took care of updating Internet access in schools and libraries by installing new computers. Private companies also took part in the initiative: Apple promised to allocate $ 100 million for the company's computers and tablets to be used for educational purposes.