What is BOOKS FOR KIDS?
I started BFK a few years back after visiting a children’s hospital and seeing that the kids there had very little access to good reading material. The playroom had a small shelf in the corner with an old, torn up selection of mostly picture books and not much else. Most of the YA books available were about cancer and dying kids. Not exactly an escape for a lot of them.
The first round of the program went poorly. I only allowed boxes of used books and not many people donated.
This time I am expanding the program.
Where do the books go?
All donated books are delivered to one of several places:
-Children’s hospitals in Toledo, Cleveland, and Columbus (I have family and friends working at each who can help out)
-Shelters for battered women and children, homeless kids, and group homes.
-Small community and after school centers with no budget for materials. Especially those which promote opportunities that keep kids off the streets and out of trouble.
What kinds of books can be donated?
*All books for the hospitals must come from non smoking homes due to the nature of the facilities. Any books from smoking homes will be deodorized and sent to other locations.
We are looking for:
-Limited picture books
-Young reader/early chapter books
-Middle grade
-Young adult
-Some adult books, both for the higher level readers and for parents who spend the majority of time with their kids in the hospital (thank you Book Twitter for suggesting this)
-New or gently used kindle or tablet devices to load ebooks onto and make available for checkout to hospital patients and parents.
-Comic books and graphic novels– teen appropriate, trades of comics preferred due to better durability rather than individual issues.
*All donations must be new or gently used. They will be checked and sorted before delivery.
How can you donate?
This time we have set up several different ways to donate.
- Send an Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift card to booklovernut@gmail.com. A book will be selected from our lists based on need.
- Buy a book off one of our available wishlists. WL 1 for the Kids/Teens list WL2 for the parents list, WL 3 for the ebook list. WL 4 for e-picture books.
- P
urchase or send a new/gently used kindle, nook, or tablet device so we can load it with ebooks and allow it to be checked out.We have had a wonderful donation of 3 brand new Kindles. If you want to help fill them with ebooks see above. - Send us a box of good condition used books from your own collections. Books can be HC, PB, or even ARC. We don’t care. Just make sure they look nice. New books or childhood favorites, the kids will appreciate it all.
- Purchase a boxed set of a series you love. We’d love to give a whole series in a nice box. Send new, send used.
*If you are sending books directly, please email me at booklovernut@gmail.com for an address. I’m working on getting a PO box but have nothing set up yet.
If you have any questions about the program please don’t hesitate to email me or send me a message on Twitter.
For those interested in donating, I’m so grateful for your generosity. This cause is very important to me and I really don’t want to let any of these kids down. Many of them have no other escape from their situation. Be it homelessness, poverty, illness, injury, abuse, or something else.
So thank you, and happy donating.
From my shelf to yours,
Erin
Leave a Reply