by Martina Barbour, Literacy Director
Over the past ten years, we have been able to reopen, staff, and maintain four public school libraries in the Fairhill area. We rely on book drives and donations from generous partners to create the collections in our school libraries. We fill the shelves with books that our students deserve – books that inspire curiosity, imagination, and a love of reading! Having dynamic and popular stories available also allows us to select wonderful books for Read Alouds, a key component in our library classes and in strengthening the literacy skills of our students.
Historic Fair Hill also gives away thousands of books every year to families in our community during literacy workshops, at our grounds, at events and festivals, and in the Free Little Libraries we manage in the neighborhood. Book drives are crucial to making sure we have enough books to share, so that we can get them into the hands of kids who will enjoy them. Many of the families in our community are unable to purchase books or have very little access to books in their area, and our book giveaways are a great way to combat those barriers and make sure books get into these homes! As members of the city’s Read by 4th initiative, we also make sure to include literacy resources to accompany these books, so that families can get the most impact from them.
Some recent highly successful book drives were run by Grant Thornton, The Women’s Connection, Friends Life Care, and Pennswood Village. Grant Thornton selected Historic Fair Hill as its charity partner of the year and one of the ways that they chose to support us was having their employees come together to donate new books from our Bookshop Wishlist. This wishlist is cultivated by our Library Coordinators and is based on what kids are asking for and also how we can enrich the collection with culturally responsive, highly engaging, and award winning books. Over the course of two drives this year, they were able to donate hundreds of new titles to our collections. The Women’s Connection does a yearly book drive for us, and every autumn we eagerly await their donations. Their members have consistently donated over 800 books a year, utilizing our wishlist for new books and our guidelines for gently used books. The quality of all of the books, the intention in which they are sought out, and the impact they have on our collections is so meaningful.
We are always looking for books that captivate and are relevant to our young readers. Our libraries serve children in Kindergarten through 8th grade. We want our young scholars to have access to a variety of topics and access to the most currently published books. Topics that our students love include: silly stories, spooky stories, books about animals and the natural world, graphic novels and age-appropriate anime, world culture, travel, newly published books, books based on movies and TV shows, books about space, bilingual (especially Spanish) books, how-to-draw books, and books with people and characters of color.
We want to offer our students good quality books that they can feel proud to read and share. New books are highly preferred but if not, used ones in excellent condition are greatly appreciated.Book integrity leads to more interested readers and a sense of pride in the books and readership. We ask that book drives and donations be selective in the quality of books donated. We want to be respectful to our children and never want to be sharing books with torn or drawn on pages, books with stains or yellowed/discolored pages, or books that have outdated information.
If you are interested in partnering with us to host a book drive for us, let us know and we can work with you to make sure we are getting the books our kids need and deserve. New books that we have requested can always be purchased throughout the year from our wishlist on Bookshop.org at bit.ly/3PuyEBZ. Proceeds from this wishlist also benefit the Julia de Burgos bookstore in Fairhill, which is an added bonus.
