Leticia Maldonado-Stamos Passes on Her Love of Reading

Literacy and Community Service Come Together in Fallbrook a Leer

By Melanie Slone

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“You can’t unlearn what you’ve already learned.” These are the words of Cesar Chavez, Leticia Maldonado Stamos, the founder of Fallbrook a Leer, tells North County Informador.

When Leticia launched her literacy program in 2004, she had Cesar Chavez’s birthday in mind—March 31. She decided to make the event an annual day of service and learning close to the California holiday, calling it Fallbrook a Leer Family Literacy Project–Cesar Chavez Day of Service and Learning.

Although 2024 marks the program’s 20^th anniversary, it hasn’t always been an easy road. Still, Leticia’s love of reading has been her guiding force.

The Joy of Reading

Leticia grew up in Fresno, the 6^th of 10 children whose parents were farm workers. When she was a child, there wasn’t much to read in her home. “We never really had books per se,” she tells us. “We were just poor kids. We didn’t take vacations, go visit family anywhere.”

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and Leticia says her family collected some volumes of Funk & Wagnall’s Encyclopedia from a grocery store. “I would just go through them and just these little tidbits of information,” she says. She also pored over a hardbound book on Native American tribes in the United States. “It was big, full of color, slick pages. I would go through that book over and over and over again for years.”

When her older brother became a truck driver, Leticia says he would go to San Francisco and Los Angeles. “For me, that was seeing the world,” she remembers. “I wanted to grow up to be a truck driver so I could see the world.”

As she grew, she realized the power of books. “Even as limited as you can be physically, you can really go into the universe with books. You can experience things that there’s no way your physical body could experience through books, through literature, good literature.”

Leticia was the first in her family to go to college, followed by her younger brother whom she admires. “It took him 12 years to finish school because he worked full time,” she tells us.

She feels lucky to have received help. “I managed to get where I am because other people cared about me, other people saw that some time invested in me could make a difference,” she says.

Today, her house is full of books, and Fallbrook a Leer is her passion project.

Fallbrook a Leer

Leticia based the program on Todos a Leer, held by Univision in several cities throughout the country in 2003. She was a guest reader at an event and asked Univision to go to Fallbrook. They held one event, then said they had run out of money.

Determined to make the program work in Fallbrook, Leticia asked what it would take to run it herself. She and the school principal decided they could recruit guest readers and get books. In 2004, Fallbrook a Leer was born.

The plan was for sixth graders to volunteer. “We wanted to start getting that idea of volunteering and being of service to your community early.” As the years went by, these kids grew and wanted to continue to participate, so the program expanded to middle school and later high school students.

Today, the event includes a parent workshop segment and guest readers from the community. Some guest readers are parents or teachers, and others are college students, professionals, and retired people. “We wanted to give community folks the opportunity to be leaders, be part of this grassroots movement.”

Maie Ellis Elementary School provides the venue and helps promote the event, and the volunteers come together to run the program. All the kids get books, backpacks, and T-shirts, paid for with donations to Fallbrook Union Elementary, the fiscal sponsor.

Fallbrook a Leer now also includes a Literacy Craft Fair. “We got community organizations to host a table that would have crafts. We want them to be somehow related to literacy—little books or printing books bags…” Music and dancing are offered as entertainment, and participants can buy some food.

The programs’ mission is to “emphasize the importance of community service and encourage literacy, reading at home,” says Leticia. “We want the kids to have libraries in their homes of books that are important to them. We give them all kinds of books that are donated, but we also buy books that are culturally relevant.”

Some 300 kids and 150 parents from Fallbrook and Vallecitos attend. The program targets low-income Latinos or low-income, Spanish-speaking families. The books given cover topics such as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, “culturally important themes like Separate is Never Equal; Good Night, Racism was another one that we gave out last year.” For the older students, there are young-adult books.

Preschoolers through 5th graders and some 6th graders listen to volunteer readers, and 6th graders through college students volunteer as readers.

Some past guest readers and speakers have included Cesar Chavez’s grandson; the author from Oceanside Victor Villaseñor; and the renowned teacher trainer Bonnie Bishop. “They choose to come and give their time to us,” says Leticia.

Overcoming Covid

Leticia is relieved and proud to say the program continued during the pandemic. The event was set to go when the country went into lockdown in 2020.

“We still had parents come in and drive through and pick up their backpacks. Everybody was registered; everybody was ready to go,” she tells us. “They picked up their backpacks, they picked up their books.”

She was fascinated to see how the event went virtual. “They put together workshops, got the guest readers to record themselves and have the books.” They also asked high school students to make videos about how to do some crafts, and craft kits were included in the backpacks. Videos were uploaded to the website, taking the event truly virtual and helping others access the information.

“I have connections with directors of Migrant Education throughout the state, and they asked to use those craft videos for their programs. We just sent them the link,” she tells us.

“Even in the Covid years, we were still doing whatever we could do to try to support families because this was such a tough time for everybody, and particularly low-income families.”  

Leticia emphasizes that Fallbrook a Leer “is completely volunteer-run, parents really feel committed to it,” but resources are always scarce. “My work as a member of the Cesar Chavez Foundation Board I think has helped me bring in resources, but it’s really been resources from the community,” she adds.

Community First

Literacy and community service have always topped Leticia’s efforts. 

When she was young, she started college at Cal State Bakersfield, where she got involved with the United Farm Workers of America and eventually married Cesar Chavez’s nephew. She continues to serve on the board of the Cesar Chavez Foundation and helps organize nursery workers in Fallbrook.

Leticia finished college at San Jose State, with a degree in Latin American History. She then worked for the Boy Scouts of America for more than 20 years, eventually retiring and moving to Fallbrook in 1997. At that time, she undertook a second career as an elementary teacher in Fallbrook and got her teaching certificate at Cal State San Marcos. “I always wanted to be a teacher when I was a kid,” she tells us.

Her last three years teaching were spent at “Opportunity School, the day school for kids that were in jeopardy of being kicked out.”

Leticia has also worked with the community through local food banks, leadership conferences, literacy workshops, voting rights efforts, and Covid-19 vaccination awareness.

Fallbrook a Leer is her signature effort, combining the two foundations she says make up who she is: “literacy and giving back to the community.”