So Our Book Giving Day Project has launched and books are slowly starting to arrive. Our dream is to fill up these shelves with books that will encourage children to read and inspire them dream to dreams and to follow them through.
Where in the World Can You Go in a Book?
Have you ever been inspired to go somewhere because of a book that you have read? I know I have dreamt of visiting the Lake District to see the lake that the Swallows and Amazon’s books were written on… and I have always wanted to visit the Alps and the world of Heidi. Let’s be honest, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t wanted to visit the land where the Wild Things Are…
And one of my absolute best books ever are the Susan Cooper Series, The Dark is Rising… I am reading it to our gang right now, pages and pages and we are unable to come up for air with excitement. This series of books took us on a family holiday to Wales a few years back… I had to see the land they described.
It doesn’t really matter if the place you dream of is real or imaginary, if it is the top of the Faraway Tree, or living in a hollowed out tree on the Side of the Mountain…
The point is not so much that you get books about faraway places, but that books can transport us out of the world we live and into wonderful and imaginative places… not just places we can go to by plane, we can be transported through time. The school we are raising a library for this year is situated right in the heart of one of Cape Town’s notorious ganglands. The reality of the world that these children live in, over-shadowed by a culture of violence, substance abuse and domestic abuse. They are in an area where poverty is a reality of life and circumstances way beyond their control… These kids can’t go places… the live within a bus ride from the ocean and many of them have never been to the beach. I can assure there aren’t any picture books about the world they live in… but we could fill the book shelves with books to inspire them to dream…
Let’s Meet the Kids
We asked them if they could choose anywhere in the world where they would like to go, “Where would they go?” And these were their replies…
- Christopher grade 4: Paris, likes the language and saw it on his sister’s video.
- Thurlyn grade 4: Grand West Ice Rink, never been there.
- Natheera grade 6: India, likes the clothes seen on TV.
- Shelton grade 6: St James beach.
- Jesse and Salie grade 6: Japan they like karate.
- Ni-Shaat grade 3: Sea Point.
- Shakeela and Wadene grade 3: Cape Town and Johannesburg respectively.
- Kiara and Aqeela and Zaria grade 1: Mitchell’s Plain; Kuil’s River and Mitchell’s Plain respectively.
- Asheeqa, and Elte grade 1: Kensington and Mitchells Plain respectively.
- Kayla grade 1: Under the sea, wants to be a boy mermaid!
- Wedaad grade 7: Other countries and New York.
- Bronwyn grade 7: London.
- Kim grade 7: Johannesburg.
So How Can You Help?
Step 1: Select a Book or Books
- You can search through your books for gently used books that your children have outgrown or no longer love.
- You can buy a book or two with your children and package them up.
- You can shop at Amazon and ship directly.
- And you can shop on-line, locally at Loot, and ship directly as well.
If you are shopping overseas and would like to buy local language books then click on the South African vendor to find books and they will deliver locally for you.
Step 2: Contact us.
Step 3: Let us Know All About the Books You Chose
We would love if you could photograph the books you are sending, or a list of the books that you ordered. If you have a blog and write about it then let us know and we will have a Progress Post each week. I will pop the photo’s you send into the blog post and if you do have a blog there will be a chance for you to link up as well…
We are so excited about this project and we really hope that our readers seize the day and join us… it doesn’t have to be huge… if even one percent of our readers pop one book into an envelope and post it off… we will have a library. So here’s to hoping that we hear from you all really soon… leave a comment saying you would like to join us, contact us… Please share this post, with your friends and family, with your play-dates, with your class. Whatever you need to do… we would so love to hear from you!!!
Libraries Our Readers Have Created in the Past
Living on the Southern tip of Africa, we are in a part of the world where this isn’t actually the standard protocol and many many children have no access to books, let alone the luxury of books in their own language or books about their own culture, not for school, not for fun and certainly not at bedtime. We can change that, book by book… I firmly believe that wherever you are, and whatever situation you are in, you can always escape into a book… but that is only if you have an opportunity to connect with a book. The project that we choose will have children that need to be able to escape the world around them, more than most of us.
- A rural village school in Lesotho.
- A Township School in Stanford.
- And a Community library in Eerste River.
- A Primary School Library in Manenburg.
We would like to thank Biblionef South Africa, for helping us to find a community in our area that needs a library, over the years they have provided us with unprecedented support in helping us to pursue our dream to provide books for children just like ours, who otherwise wouldn’t have access to books.
Disclosure: The Amazon and Loot 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.
I’d love to be involved again! Thank you for the opportunity.
Hay Sherrin, Good to hear from you!!! I have dropped you a mail with all the details. Have a fabulous weekend!!!
We would love to get involved. We are coming to Cape Town in mid April and our children would like to bring a few books for the library. I hope that would not be too late?
Hi Carolin, It’s never too late, pop me an email when you are in town and I will send you the details… Have a great week!!!