Our first BookSmiles Bash fundraiser happened at the Community House of Moorestown, with 200 friends and supporters in attendance. We did the following:

• Recognized 3.2 million children's books distributed
• Thanked our teen ambassadors
• Heard inspiring words about book-access from board member Senator Troy Singleton
• Made new friends
• Raised $33,500 for operating expenses
• Weren't able to make it but feel inspired after viewing the pics? We'd love your donation to help get us to $40,000. Every dollar helps us acquire and distribute 2 gently used kids books. Make it happen here:

What you need: 

• A school serving a minimum 75% population of students receiving free or reduced lunch. 
• School Liaison to help coordinate the event- administrative approval, space request, help with schedules. 
• A minimum of 3-4 volunteers to help liaison set up and then run the bookfair with set-up, stocking tables, distributing to students and clearing up.  These volunteers could be parents, relatives, district high school students, or recently retired teachers from the school. 
• A space to set up- bigger spaces mean more classes can shop at once. I.e. library, gym, cafeteria. 
• Depending on the space, extra tables for laying out books to help students "shop".
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BookSmiles will: 

• Provide enough books for each student to “shop” for 3 to take home
• Provide some display cases (donated by Action Tank Philadelphia!) for the day. 
• Leave all leftover books for the teachers and school.
• Provide reusable bags for students to shop with.

What we have noticed: 

• Schools that have pre-made schedules for each class to come down helps the book fair flow, and minimizes instructional time disruption.
• If one class is shopping at a time, they do not need more than 10-15 min. Book Fairs that had 20 or more minutes allotted was too much time.

Fill out the form if you want to make this happen: https://www.booksmiles.org/request-a-book-distribution-event.htmlwww.booksmiles.org/request-a-book-distribution-event.html

We're starting something new!  Too often, kids feel excluded from commercial book fairs because they don't have the money to buy shiny, new books.  BookSmiles has a solution with our "Three for Free" book fairs, where it costs only a smile and a thank you to "purchase" a book!

Enjoy the pics from two Philly schools during Read Across America week!
We had so much fun distributing to these two Philadelphia Schools.
Between both schools, we provided over 4,000 books for these scholars to take for free. We want every kid to get to experience book joy!

Do you know of a school that's 80% or more free/reduced lunch?  We can provide the books if the school can provide volunteers from the community to run the fair! Think of the parents, grandparents and community connectors who would be happy to assist.
Please contact [email protected] for more information.

Jane Golden is the founder and executive director of Mural Arts Philadelphia and I am so honored to have her visit the Book Bank.
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Looking forward to spreading book-wealth with her iconic murals as a back-drop. Art and Literature, perfect together.

Confession.  For years, we placed the following hardcovers in a landfill dumpster behind the Book Bank: outdated reference like World Books,encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases -  torn, waterdamaged tomes - and obsolete curricular materials. It broke our hearts, but we had no recourse because our recycler would have fined us for mixing this with the softcover recycle mix.  We were getting close to ordering a larger dumpster, which would have cost us a couple hundred dollars more each month.

And then we connected with United States Recycling Inc./Newman Paperboard, a paper recycler located just over the Tacony Palmyra Bridge.  They offered to pay us for damaged and out of date books, which they transform into hard cardboard for puzzles, luxury boxes, playing cards, book covers, and game board. 

​We got rid of our dumpsters and together we're working to keep books out of landfill.  Unwanted books are now wanted.  Please see where they go! https://newmanpaperboard.com/

What a joy to share our books with the world.  Thank you Shamma Dickens-Phillips, Executive Director of The Bridgeview Foundation, for arranging this shipment.

"Many thanks for the  donation and the schools are very grateful for your generous donation.

The Bethany Primary and Infant School extends our heartfelt gratitude for your generous contribution of books. We recognize that today's reader is tomorrow's leader, and your kindness will inspire our students to grow, learn and lead.

Thank you for your invaluable support."

Anika White-Claire

Today we took the show on the road and distributed 1800 books to grateful teachers in Chester during their professional development day. This was the first time for us spreading book-joy at a PD, and we're onto something.  

These teachers will stock their classroom libraries and distribute them to their young scholars.  Let's make sure that every child has a library of their own!

And a huge should out to our Action Tank friends for helping distribute.  Vets performing public service the day after Veteran's Day is a beautiful thing.  Take note of the carboard bookshelves donated by Mark and Linda Torres!

What a joy to distribute 1000 books to students at James J Sullivan Elementary School during Literacy Night! We are honored to serve Philadelphia schools and envision a time where EVERY student grows up with books in the home, starting at infancy.
Thank you, Principal Ms. Shantelle Yarbrough and Assistant Principal Nicole Ridgeway for inviting BookSmiles into your school. It was a great time!

Access to books starting at infancy is key to breaking intergenerational poverty. Tim Whitaker, the founder and Executive Director of Mighty Writers and I discussed irrigating book deserts by distributing books through food banks and pantries. And MW distributes LOTS of food!

It was wonderful showing Tim and his staff the Book Bank in Pennsuaken. Reach out and we'll schedule a date for a tour! ​