It’s World Book Day, a huge day on the world of children’s books. This is the day we think about all the books that fired up our imaginations as kids… our favourite favourites. The ones we have to keep on our shelves forever and the ones we love so much that we have to share them…
It is also the perfect day to talk about our Book Giving Day Project. The point of World Book Day is to encourage kids to read… and we are doing just that by creating libraries for children, who would otherwise not have access to books at all.
We are trying, with your help, to build a library for a school with over a thousand students in it and no access to a library, either at school or in their community. No books for dreaming, no books for thinking and no books for just escaping… I think we could set as a goal to create a library that each child could take out a book every week. When I ask my kids what their favourite books are… we can be busy for hours. Our dream is to give each of these kids a favourite childhood book by the end of the year. I believe we can, just by gifting one book at a time…
For those of you that are new here I thought I would quickly tell you a little bit about our Building a Library Book by Book Project: Once a year for a number of years now, we generate a library of books for a school in desperate need. With the help of our blogging community we have been able to build a rural library, a inner city library, a township library… it just grows every year. How it works is that folk all over the world send a gift of a book or two, either they buy them online or they ship books that they have already read and would like to share… and slowly but surely the books roll in, one by one until we have a library to share. It is completely possible to build a library book by book…
This year we have sponsor, that you are all going to love, to help us with our project. Super Nova Magazine have come on board and as well as gifting our library with a collection of books they will match each order bought with our coupon code, by gifting the same order to our library project. Anyone who subscribes to the magazine before the end of April, is also buying a subscription for our library project. So already they have gifted a collection of magazines to the school, but your subscription can help our library grow…
Super Nova is a locally produced, real live magazine for curious kids, geared towards primary and middle schoolers… it is a great quality magazine absolutely packed full of facts, issues, science, stuff kids (and their parents) love to read about. We recently featured in an article that they wrote on Citizen Science and you can check it out here… And if your kids do great and exciting stuff they can write in and join the story too… they love hearing from kids. This is the classic magazine of our childhood, reinvented for kids today… there is everything to love about it and we are so excited to have them onboard and helping us to create a library for these kids.
You can read about our Citizen Science Project over here… and how dreamy is it to find yourself in real live print. Funny thing, instead of calling the hoods by their “real names” Hood #1, hood #2 etc… they gave them assumed names for the article… and that gave my guys hours of hilarity… they called each other by their Super Nova names for weeks!!!
If you would like to join Super Nova Magazine and have them match your purchases then follow this link:
So How Can You Help to Build a Library?
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. Remember these books are gifts, we will visit the school when they unpack them. Loved books are great, over loved books… not so much, and old tattered textbooks from your college days that have been used as door stops… really not so much.
- 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.
While all the students do learn English, many of the learners have Afrikaans or Xhosa as their first language. English books are very welcome, so are books in Afrikaans and Xhosa. Any books will be great, story books, picture books, craft books, cook books, reference books… really any books. There is a large community being served here. 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, if you shop on-line then just send us 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 almost weekly. 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…
Step 4: There is a Deadline…
We would like to deliver the books that we personally collect and accumulate in the first week or two of May, so while you can ship anytime… we are hoping to end this campaign by the end of April.
Otherwise if you have contacted us and left a comment, I will be emailing you all over the next few days with the shipping information… and if you haven’t received an email by next week then please please please comment again.
Great work, again! count us in for books!
Thank you so much dvs, You have been counted!!! Have a fabulous week!!!
I will get ours sorted probably on that long weekend BUT I will Aramex them so you’ll get them super quick!
please count us in!
I thought I signed on and I’ve been wondering why I didn’t get an email. Guess gremlins ate my comment. Please send me the details. I have the books waiting to be mailed out.
Very interesting post! Thanks