Remember the Michigan barber we told you about — the guy who gives kids’ parents a $2 discount if they agree to read books aloud during their haircuts? Well, he’s had an interesting week, to say the least.
As Faithwire recently reported, barber Ryan Griffin of The Fuller Cut in Ypsilanti, Michigan, wanted to inspire kids to read more, so he and the barbershop started offering the aforementioned reading and discount program back in 2015.
Parents, of course, quickly fell in love with it for two reasons: It gets their kids reading and it saves them some cash.
“What parent don’t want a couple dollars off when you got three boys in the barber shop plus you?” customer Robert Hopkins told CBS News.
In recent days, the story about the book reading discount has gone viral. And the barbershop has been inundated with support and interest from across the nation and the globe as a result.
That intrigue and reaction has come in the form of book and cash donations as well as letters galore, according to NPR.
“We are literally getting boxes from Florida, Oregon, Washington, Maine, California,” Griffin told the outlet, encouraging people to instead start sending their book donations to local barbershops — an effort that could expand the reading program to other communities across America.
“If everybody took one book — one book — to their barbershop this Saturday and said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna leave this book here just in case you want kids to read,’ then you’ve done the same thing I did,” he said.
As for the letters, some of the notes have come from teachers and librarians who explained how valuable it was that the barbershop, which is owned by Alex Fuller, is encouraging positive reading habits.
Griffin and Fuller want to use the funds that have come in to help support local teachers, so they’re looking for advice on how best to spend it, NPR reported.
“I would like for a teacher or former teacher to say, ‘Hey, when I was teaching, this made my day go by easier,’ or ‘I have these certain kids who can use,'” Griffin said.
As previously reported, in an Oct. 14 post on The Fuller Cut Facebook page, the barbershop expressed surprise over the “sudden and unexpected buzz” over the reading program, and thanked the public for its reaction.
Before the story went viral, Griffin reportedly said he had accumulated 100 books since launching the program in August 2015. Those books mostly focus on issues pertaining to the black community, which is reflective of the barbershop’s main customer base.
“One thing I said I would never [compromise] is that they have to be all positive African-American books,” Griffin said. “I want kids to pick up something that looks like them and that’s a positive story about them.”