For the past few months, NextDraft has been following along with the travels of my friends Robbi and Matthew who have taken their four kids on the Busload of Books tour. So far they’ve traveled 16,731 miles, visited 33 Title 1 schools in 33 states, and given away 16,000 books. The roadtrip has taken them (and us) to where the rubber hits the road, below 24-hour news channel airwaves, beneath the smokescreen of political atmospherics, right down to the streets of main street America. It turns out that the kids and teachers at the schools the bus has parked in front of don’t talk about politics and don’t discuss whether they’re in a blue state or a red state. They’re not obsessed with critical race theory and they know that Covid wasn’t a political issue to attack each other over but rather a really sad, traumatic experience that hurt our kids—yes, because of missed school, but also because of all the death—and stressed our educators. They’re not threatened by books nor are they requesting book bans. Instead, many of the kids Robbi and Matthew visit spend the first few moments with their new books smelling them, touching them, and listening to the the crackling of the binding. Why? Because most of them have never owned a new book before. That’s the real story we’re being distracted from when we focus on all the polarizing social media inflamed political bile being served up by those who benefit from divisiveness, a group that too often includes the media. The real story is not the cultural divide, it’s the economic one.

I’ll let Robbi and Matthew tell you what they’ve seen: “Kids suffering from hunger, homelessness, and trauma. Students grappling with having lost family members to violence, drugs, and Covid. It’s hard to teach a kid to read when they’re exhausted from watching their siblings while their mom works three jobs—or because they’ve been placed in a foster home because both parents are struggling with addiction. Imagine having to navigate these situations at age eight and then be expected to learn your times tables. Poverty is the underlying problem. Not the schools. Not the teachers. Not the kids.”

In addition to the 16,000 books, Robbi and Matthew have also given and received close to that many hugs. That’s the other untold story about America. We’re not that different, we’re not that hateful, and we might even want to hug each other when we meet in person instead of viewing each other through the prism of our modern distortion field. Yes, this is an unusual lead item for me, but some days the biggest news is something that’s not in the news at all. And I didn’t want you to miss the bus.