International World Book Giving Day Blog Hop – And A Progress Report…

Welcome to the International Book Giving Day Blog Hop… Last week was International World Book Giving Day and all over the world folk celebrated by giving books to young people, old people, really all sorts of people…If you took part in World Book Giving Day and blogged about it then we would love you to link up, at the end of this post, and show us what you did…

On International Book Giving Day we launched our campaign to create a library for a small township school… I can not imagine a life without reading to my children and teaching them to read and having them able to wander off into a book and travel to places, real and imagined, just by opening up the covers of a book. So many children in our part of the world do not have the luxury of books in their lives and we really wanted to make a difference this International Book Giving Day. So we chose to help a pre-primary school in a township outside of a village, Stanford, outside of our city… Cape Town. This school, which began in an effort to keep young children off the street during the day and give them a positive first step onto the ladder of schooling, has done so much more in the few years they have been running, with the few resources that they have.

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This Project came as a complete surprise to the school… they didn’t actually have any idea that it was going to happen until the day we launched!!! And it is lovely to see how excited they are about the project!!! Here is the potential school library that with our readers we can turn into a reality. The whole community is so excited about this project, they are getting together to paint the walls and to create book cases and it all sounds very exciting… you know we are going to have to visit them in a couple of weeks to show you how it turned out.…

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And How Can You Help?

Step 1 – Select a book: or books that have been gently used or buy a book or two with your kids and post them to the school or shop at Amazon or Kalahari and ship directly. The children’s first language is the local language, Xhosa, but they are learning english as well… so English picture books and easy readers will be perfect. Also if you have books for older children to read, you are welcome to send them along as the whole community will benefit from the library.

Step 2 – Contact us: for the shipping/postal address and we will send it on to you as soon as we can get back to you.

Step 3 – Let us Know: What books you chose so that we include them in future progress rapports…

Now some of our readers wanted to know where they could buy Xhosa picture books and it wasn’t quite as easy as I expected!!! But you can get them locally at The Reader’s Warehouse, who stock books like: The three Friends Taxi, The Cool Nguni, A kite flight as well as various fairy tales. They also stock titles from the local publisher Jacana. If you are ordering from overseas you can contact the Reader’s Warehouse and order specific book titles or you can shop online on the Jacana website. The exciting news is that when the Reader’s Warehouse heard about our project they offered to supply some books for the school too… how exciting is that!!! Really I can’t thank the Reader’s Warehouse for their excellent service, time and time again!!!

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Already so many of our readers have chosen books and sent books… I just love this wonderful books, special books and favourite books from all over the world rushing… package by package all the way to this little school in the country!!!


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As I said at the start of this post, this project is part of the Internatinal World Book Giving Day Community and if you blogged about your Book Giving Project or if you took pictures of books that you gave away we would love you to link up… the team of bloggers that promoted this special day around the world can all be found here…

International Book Giving Day planning team:

Disclosure: The Amazon and Kalahari links are affiliate links and our blog will earn a very small percentage of the book sales made there, we pledge to put any of our earnings from books for the school directly back into buying more books for them… this is their project and we don’t in any way want to gain financially from it.



9 Replies to “International World Book Giving Day Blog Hop – And A Progress Report…”

  1. Hi Se7en, I’ve just ordered these from Jacana:
    UNosipho uzokuhlala oko
    Ndingabakho naphina
    Khenkce-khenkce epokothweni yam
    UThando Rocker
    And I wanted to let everyone know that the online ordering was very easy and straightforward, plus secure – they used additional verification for my card purchase which I was really pleased about.

  2. Thanks for sharing this update. It’s great to hear about the school’s excitement for the project and that the Reader’s Warehouse has donated books! -Amy

  3. Hi Amy, I collected books from the bookstore today, Reader’s Warehouse… a whole box of books, the kids are going to love them!!! Such exciting news!!!

  4. Hay Zoe… I am so thrilled that this turned out to be an easy option for you, that is fantastic news!!! I so look forward to visiting the library in a couple of weeks and seeing the project firsthand!!!

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