Scholastic, in collaboration with the National Urban League (NUL), launched the Read and Rise initiative to help build the reading skills of African American children. To date, more than a million Read and Rise: Preparing Our Children For a Lifetime of Success literacy guides have been distributed through the National Urban League's 100 affiliate operations, 400 nonprofit organizations, schools, libraries and government agencies. The guide is also available as a free download at Read and Rise.

In addition to the guide, Scholastic and the Urban League developed Read and Rise magazine, a fun, engaging periodical designed to provide rich shared reading experiences for parents and children. The magazine is distributed free by Scholastic, NUL and other non-profit organizations that work with children and families. Scholastic's Read and Rise parent workshop curriculum, Read and Rise Parent Circles, is a five-part workshop series used by Urban League affiliates nationwide to teach parents how to improve their children's early literacy skills.

In 2006, as part of the initiative, Scholastic published a children’s book, Read and Rise, by award-winning author Sandra Pinkney and photographer Myles Pinkney, which Kirkus Reviews calls a “bright effort to empower African-American children and promote literacy…the abundance and clarity of the photographs allow the very young to ‘read’ from cover to cover.