On Saturday mornings across Atlanta, something sacred is happening.
Fathers walk into libraries hand-in-hand with their children not rushed, not distracted, not unsure of whether they belong. They arrive with purpose. With joy. With presence. Laughter echoes between bookshelves. Children curl into their fathers’ arms. Stories come alive. And in those moments, literacy is no longer an assignment it is an act of love.
At the center of it all is Khari Arnold, Founder of Library Dads a journalist by trade, a father by calling, and a man who understands that the most powerful revolutions often begin quietly.
“I am a child of God first,” Khari says. “Then a husband, then a father. Everything else flows from that.”
A Man Becoming Himself
Khari’s journey didn’t begin with an organization. It began with introspection.
A Howard University graduate and sports journalist who rose to become Managing Editor at NBA.com, Khari had built a career covering greatness. But becoming a father forced him to look inward to ask who he was, who he wanted to be, and who his daughter would see when she looked at him.
In 2022, he made a bold decision: he stepped away from social media for an entire year.
“I just wanted to learn myself more,” he says. “My wife was pregnant, and I knew how could I raise a daughter to love herself if I hadn’t fully learned how to love myself?”
That year changed everything. When Khari returned to social media, he began sharing parts of himself he had never shared publicly including that he was born with one hand.
“For the first time, I really stepped into my identity,” he reflects. “I had to deal with insecurities I’d carried quietly. But I knew I couldn’t lead, I couldn’t be front-facing, I couldn’t serve if I was still hiding.”
As a child, one of the first books that shaped him told the story of Jim Abbott, a Major League Baseball pitcher who played for the New York Yankees with one hand.
“What do you think that did for me as a five-year-old kid?” Khari asks. “It let me know I could do whatever I put my mind to.”
That lesson representation as liberation never left him.
A Father Who Modeled Possibility
Khari credits much of his confidence and sense of possibility to his father, a landscaper who never treated him as limited.
“He gave me the same assignments if not tougher ones than my brother,” Khari says. “That shaped how I saw myself.”
But perhaps just as impactful was what Khari saw every morning.
“I saw my dad reading on the porch. I saw newspapers delivered to the house. I saw his Bible. I saw bookshelves,” he recalls. “That told me this is something a man does.”
In a world where less than 2% of teachers are Black men, Khari asks a critical question:
“What social cue exists for boys to see that reading is something they should do if they don’t see men doing it?”
The Lightbulb Moment
Library Dads was born not from a business plan, but from a sink-side realization.
Khari and his daughter had spent a full year going to the library every Saturday. It became their sacred ritual their bond.
Standing in front of his bathroom sink one night, a thought surfaced to make a reel and capture the moment.
He searched Instagram for inspiration.
“I typed in ‘The Library Dad,’” he says. “Nothing came up.”
And in that silence, purpose spoke.
“That’s when it hit me,” he says. “It’s not going to be The Library Dad. It’s going to be Library Dads. Bigger than me. Bigger than my daughter. About community.”
That very night, the page was created.
“I truly believe God dropped it in my spirit,” Khari says. “That night.”
More Than Reading: A Brotherhood
Library Dads is intentionally two-generational serving fathers and children at the same time.
“For the dads, it’s about feeling seen, heard, and understood,” Khari explains. “For the kids, it’s about bonding, joy, and building a lifelong love for reading.”
One father found Library Dads scrolling on TikTok.
“He told me later, ‘Man, I really needed this,’” Khari recalls. “He had just moved, had a one-year-old, felt depressed. All his friends were in a different chapter of life. This gave him community.”
That’s the quiet impact.
“I don’t even tell people I started Library Dads,” Khari says. “I tell them I’m a part of it because I really am.”
Weddings. Birthday parties. Late-night conversations. Video games. Faith. Finances. Life.
Brotherhood returned.
Making Literacy Feel Like Joy
At Library Dads events, reading is anything but rigid.
“We make it fun, bro,” Khari says with a smile.
There are songs. Dancing. Storytelling. Projectors. One Saturday featured a “library roller coaster” kids strapped into their dads’ arms as a POV roller-coaster video played on the screen, laughter filling the room.
Then came the book Daddy’s Arms.
“When the page talked about dad being the tickle monster,” Khari says, “the dads just started tickling their kids no prompting.”
That’s the magic.
“Our mantra is simple,” he explains. “Build lifetime bonds. Create lifelong readers. Do life with community.”
And the impact is measurable.
“Seventy-five percent of kids in our survey show a higher interest in reading since joining Library Dads,” Khari shares. “Kids are running to bookshelves. Asking for three books minimum at bedtime.”
“Reading isn’t punishment,” he says. “It’s pleasure.”
Marriage Before Mission
Behind the movement is a marriage grounded in clarity and love.
“My values are clear,” Khari says. “God. My wife. My child. If this ever gets in the way of that, I’m doing something wrong.”
His wife is not just his partner in life, but a key part of Library Dads’ foundation handling administrative work, supporting the vision, and keeping the balance.
“When we’re on dates,” Khari laughs, “I try not to talk Library Dads and instead pour into our marriage and home.”
Married just one week before the world shut down in March 2020, their union has been forged in intention.
“I want my daughter to know what a husband looks like,” Khari says. “Providing emotional, spiritual, and mental safety not just finances.”
What Comes Next
In 2026, Library Dads is expanding its reach through the Library Dads Atlanta Fatherhood Tour, bringing the experience to Clayton, DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties.
“We’ve reached hundreds of dads,” Khari says. “But imagine the ones we haven’t reached yet. We’re coming to them.”
Because the literacy crisis demands community solutions.
“No one knows what the future of work looks like in the age of AI,” Khari says. “But we do know critical thinking will matter. And literacy builds that.”
“All these ‘literacies’ financial, digital, AI, they’re tethered to reading,” he adds. “Literacy is competence.”
A Legacy Written in Love
Khari tells the story of a high-school friend, now an award-winning engineer, who remembers her father taking her to the library every weekend.
“I asked her what she remembered more the books or the bonding,” Khari says. “She said the bonding. One hundred percent.”
Then he pauses.
“When you have a loving dad, your heart gets bigger,” he says. “But when you have a library dad, your heart and mind get bigger.”
This is the work.
Not flashy. Not loud. But transformational.
One father. One child. One book. One Saturday at a time.
And in that quiet space between pages, a future is being written.