This Tucson teacher created a 'bookworm path' to help kids learn about the Sonoran Desert 📕🌵

There are 20 large mailboxes carefully placed along a path in Mission Garden on Tucson’s west side.

While they may look like ordinary mailboxes from the outside, the inside is filled with educational magic — books and activities for kids to read and utilize as they explore the wonders of the garden.

Each stop on the Mission Garden Bookworm Path has a different theme that touches on botany, history, food, architecture, animals and culture of the Sonoran Desert region. Some examples include learning about corn and javelinas, bats and chickens, and gourd music.

The materials range from kindergarten to 12th-grade levels and are based on Arizona’s education standards. 

And the mailboxes include materials written in Spanish, O’odham, Hopi, Braille and soon, Chinese.

Garden explorers can complete the 20-stop path in one visit or come back multiple times to thoroughly read and complete the books and activities.

“The idea is for there to be books of all kinds, all the way from toddler books all the way up through middle school and high school books in each box on each subject and then some sort of activity,” said Camilla Johnson, the creator of the Mission Garden Bookworm Path. “And in a lot of them, we have numerous activities so that we kind of have grade-level appropriate pieces (in the boxes).”

Johnson, a teacher in Tucson for 34 years, had the idea to start the bookworm path in March 2020, right when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close their doors.

As an educator, she knew that kids didn’t learn well online, she says, and she wanted to find a way to give kids a hands-on education safely during the pandemic.

So, she reached out to the garden’s board members and asked if she could place a few boxes of educational materials surrounding the Youth Garden.

“They were totally receptive and just said, ‘Yeah, why don't we use the whole garden? You just pick the spots and we'll figure it out,’” she said.

The bookworm path started with five stops along the route in the summer of 2020 and has since grown to 20, with five more in the works. 

Initially, the bookworm path featured small boxes from Goodwill but Johnson and the rest of the garden crew quickly realized they needed something larger and waterproof to house the picture books and other materials.

They began collecting large mailboxes through donations or yard sales and purchased the remaining needed mailboxes with the help of a SNAP-Ed and Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona grant, Johnson said.

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Johnson says the bookworm path wouldn’t have happened without the help and support of the Mission Garden team.

“They've got a lot of other projects going on and for them to put so much support behind this has been really wonderful,” she said.

Johnson began volunteering at Mission Garden on weekends in 2014 and was one of the members that helped create the Youth Garden on the southwest side of the property in 2015. 

Since implementing the Mission Garden Bookworm Path in 2020, Johnson and the rest of the garden team are now looking into adding a sensory garden and including a new scavenger hunt along the bookworm path to keep kids interested.

“During COVID, it was critical because they (kids) just needed a place that was safe to learn outside. And I think, I hope it will be long-lasting,” Johnson said.

“Because it's just fun, you know, and (I hope) that kids will want to keep coming back. We intend to keep adding new books and new stops,” she said, adding that she hopes the kids will leave the garden feeling inspired and want to keep coming back to learn more about the Sonoran Desert.

But most of all, Johnson hopes that the bookworm path’s visitors will realize that learning is fun.

“These are your roots. This is part of your story,” she said. “So come learn about it.”

If you go

What: Mission Garden Bookworm Path.

Where: Mission Garden, located at 946 W. Mission Lane.

When: 8 a.m to noon Wednesday-Saturday.

Price: A suggested $5 donation to Mission Garden.

For more information, check out their website.