By Daniele Berman, Operations Manager
Last weekend marked the first Books to Go for Tweens and Teens event of the program’s second year, and it was just as exciting as last year’s three distributions! On Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, 35 local educators and nonprofit partners selected a total of 5,585 books to take back to their students. That’s almost 1,000 books per hour that left our office and made their way one step closer to students who will get to take them home and keep them forever!
One of the best things about this program is hearing how the distributions have become part of the culture of the schools where the books end up. “My kids know we get books from Book Harvest three times a year,” explains Alyssa Putt, Language Arts teacher at Neal Magnet Middle School, and regular Books to Go attendee. “Once they’ve had me, they come back to check to see if I have more books, even when they’re not in my class.”
Kelly Shaver, another regular attendee and Language Arts teacher at Lowe’s Grove Magnet Middle School, shares that her Books to Go finds have their own honored spot in her classroom: in the “Readbox,” a special shelf modeled after the ubiquitous Redbox movie vending machines. “The only difference is that the kids don’t have to return their books!” And as with all of our programs, that is, in fact the key: all the books distributed through Books to Go are for middle and high school students to take home to build their own home libraries. In its first year, through distributions in August and December 2015 and May 2016, Books to Go rehomed a total of 20,509 books. Our second cycle is off to another exciting start!
