HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Reading is such an important part of learning — the stories can take you to faraway places and even teach you about different cultures, but what if a child feels they can’t relate to any of the books at school?

Books Like Me is a local nonprofit that addresses that problem.

Two Hillsborough County students created the organization a couple of years ago to make sure all students — no matter their race, or background — have access to books like them, and in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, the organization donated over 300 books to Hillsborough County Schools, like Crestwood Elementary in Tampa.

“A lot of these students don’t have any books of their own at home, so to be able to get a donation like this, and put books in their hands is just wonderful." said Luis Russo, the Media Specialist at Crestwood Elementary School. "(The students) can’t identify with some of the characters, not every character is a Harry Potter or Captain Underpants, and these are more multi-cultural characters they can identify with and that gets them excited about reading."

Crystal Campbell has gotten to know Mr. Russo well. She’s the Executive Director of Books Like Me, and before starting her actual job, Campbell starts her day delivering books.

“We’re dropping off books for Crestwood Elementary today to some of the teachers, the media specialist and also some of the students,” said Campbell.

At Crestwood, there’s a diverse group of students, and a dozen teachers requested books from Books Like Me just for Hispanic Heritage Month. The students were able to come to the media center to pick out their very own book.

All of them have characters the students can relate to, and they’re all personally selected by Campbell’s nieces, Haili and Brooke Smith.

The girls now live in California, but two years ago when they started Books Like Me, they were Hillsborough County students.  

“We realized a lot of the books we were reading, there was little to no representation for people who look like us, so then we realized it’s the same in our school libraries too,” said Haili.

Now, Campbell helps them, and keeps the organization running in Florida while they work on expanding to their new school district in California. The girls personally read the books to find ones they think other students will be interested in reading.

“If you’re not represented in books, I feel like you won’t understand as much, so if you see yourself in a book, you’ll be able to connect with it,” said Haili.

Books Like Me has donated over 7700 books in just two years, and the girls plan on donating thousands more. They have set up an Amazon Wish List if you would like to purchase a book to be donated.