Tommy Oliver never imagined he’d be a single parent at age 50. When his daughter died in 2016, he began raising three granddaughters ages 4 and younger.

“It was like starting all over,” he said. “My youngest is 20, and the stuff (the grandkids) are doing, I’ve forgotten all about. It opens your mind back up to a lot of potential.”

Or lost potential, given the troubling literacy statistics of local children.

Librarians and educators in Multnomah County say they’re confronting a literacy crisis that will constrain the futures of thousands of children in the Portland area. More than half of local third-graders cannot meet grade-level reading standards, according to the Oregon Department of Education.

Children who have trouble learning to read, experts say, have a tough time transitioning to “reading to learn.”

Children who are not proficient readers are less likely to graduate from high school. Oregon ranks 48th nationwide in high school graduation rates .

For Oliver, that’s where the Library Foundation comes in.

The privately funded nonprofit underwrites the Every Child a Reader program at Albina Head Start, the early learning program two of his three granddaughters have attended.

Each week, they’ve come home with a bag of four new books.

“It helps us a tremendous amount,” Oliver said. “The structure, the consistency. It keeps me motivated too.’”

The Multnomah County Library system is already one of the busiest in the country.

The mission of the Library Foundation, established in 1995, is to expand that reach.

The nonprofit has five full-time and two part-time employees and spent approximately $2.5 million last year, two-thirds of which came from donations.

The foundation’s focus is programs that support early literacy and outreach to at-risk children, a priority it established in 2003.

The Every Child A Reader program circulates more than 32,000 books in 17 languages through a weekly book exchange.

The books go out through Head Start sites, teen parent and immigrant programs, drug and alcohol rehab centers and home health professionals.

It supports events where librarians and volunteers provide early literacy training, teaching simple strategies any parent can use.

“We help them take the library’s programs much further with a relatively small amount of money,” said Merris Sumrall, chief executive of the organization.

The foundation helps fund the library’s summer reading program, which reached 98 percent of elementary students in the county this year.

It sends librarians into classrooms for “book talks” that inspire reading, and helps fund workshops, author appearances and cultural programs like Everybody Reads.

Lucy Iraola, a bilingual youth librarian who coordinates the Every Child A Reader program, said the foundation’s sponsorship of events is critical in establishing a connection to the library among immigrant families, who may never have had access to such a resource before.

That goes beyond books to include computer and internet access, periodicals, movies, CDs and English classes.

Iraola said it’s crucial to provide families with books in their native languages.

That makes it easier for families to establish a reading routine.

Providing kids with a solid basis in the language they speak at home makes it easier to acquire English, she said.

“These families wouldn’t be able to afford these books, and if it weren’t for the foundation support, we wouldn’t be able to provide them,” she said.