Booktrust

The wonderful Booktrust has just donated this box of gorgeous new books to us. Booktrust has been promoting books, reading and writing for more than 90 years. They are the gold standard in this business.  Thank you, Booktrust, your gift will be hugely appreciated. Now please go back to Give a Book.

London Book Swap Day and International Book Giving Day

So, for those in London,  Saturday 15th February is London Book Swap Day taking place in 19 venues across London. And yesterday, St Valentine's Day, was  International Book Giving Day. We were delighted to be part of it.  Our own Adeela gave these to a local group of toddlers as part of IBGD. She says: "The kids and their parents were really surprised and pleased to receive new books and did spread the word of IBGD!"

National Libraries Day

Today, Saturday February 8th 2014, is National Libraries Day. The Children's Laureate, Malorie Blackman, often cited and celebrated in the GAB blog, has written rousingly today in The Guardian about her own use of libraries when a child as a home from home, on the importance of libraries for everyone as story-telling hubs, resource, book repository and so much more. She writes: "As far as I am concerned every day should be National Libraries Day." Here at GAB we second that. Our Magic Breakfast Book Clubs hook up with the local library so that the love of books and reading born in the book clubs spills over into the world outside. Every member of our Book Clubs gets their own special library card.  Give a Book.

International Book Giving Day

Friday 14th February is not only St Valentine's Day, celebrated by birds, poets and lovers since Chaucer's time and maybe even before that; it's also International Book Giving Day, the day dedicated to getting new, used and borrowed books in the hands of as many children as possible. GAB's own Adeela has written a blog for them about our work and everything you can do to help. So please do go back to Give a Book and do just that.

Shared reading groups at The Reader Org

Our friends The Reader Org have sent us word and pictures of the Kensal Book Break group reading The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham, sharing their personal responses to the book as they read it together, over a cup of tea and biscuits.
“This book has got everything; gossip, history, romance. A gripping story so far, can’t wait to find out what happens next.”

In all of their shared reading groups they read aloud together from the same text, often taking several months to read a whole book as they share the experience of the story unfolding week by week. They tell us: "It's brilliant for us to have these sets of several copies of the same book which we can keep for as long as it takes us to read the whole book, and will be read by other groups in future."

You can find all their weekly shared reading groups here: http://www.thereader.org.uk/reading-with-us.aspx.

Now please go back to Give a Book and help us carry on doing this.

Books for children at Christmas

Here's a cheering and inspiring story for Christmas--Juliet is a one-woman Give a Book who collects new books and gives them to 16 or more venues---including hospitals and children's hospices. She also set up a thriving phone box library in her home village. She told us "St Thomas's are collecting from me later this week for their general wards, and the Evelina children’s department, and then Great Ormond Street next week....so that all children incarcerated over the Christmas period get a gift from Father Christmas`s literary pile!?"
So why not Give a Book for Christmas to someone who really needs one.

Thank you

The excellent and generous Portobello Press  have kindly donated lovely new fliers to Give a Book for Christmas. Huge thanks from all of us for this support.