On a beautiful fall Sunday, 226 runners and walkers came out for our 3rd Annual 5K.  We raised $25,000, so a big shout out to our sponsors, vendors, volunteers, and supporters.

Princeton takes books and education very seriously.  That's why we're thrilled that Littlebrook Elementary has created a collection station for kids and grown-up books. 

Today Larry explained to first graders that they can now share their books with other children who lack access.  And the word of the day was ACCESS.

What better way to start the school year than to have a visit from educator/author Hallee Adelman.  She and the BookSmiles crew put on a party! Fifty Philly teachers enjoyed an evening of food, raffles, golden-ticket prizes, and free books! 

How great to kick off our partnership with the School District of Philadelphia at their Back-to-School Celebration & Bus Tour.
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Here are a few of our goals:
1. Serve as a common-sense alternative to the corporate book fairs, where most kids get priced out. We have free books at our Fair BookSmiles Book Faires!
2. Provide teachers with classroom libraries.
3. Inject hundreds of thousands of books into the day cares and childcare centers that feed Philly kindergartens and preschools.

A New Jersey township library had a problem; the director told us that they needed to cull 30,000 books, CDs, and DVDs from their collection. This happens all the time, all over the country.  

We said that we could use them to trade for quality, gently used kids books.

This morning, the public works department delivered three loaded pallets of books!  By the time we're finished 15 tons of obsolete library materials will be diverted from landfill.  The library wins. Booksmiles wins. And most importantly, the children we serve will win. 

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.