Is anyone aware of book publishers who are willing to donate children's books to schools for the purpose of giving them to the students to use in their own personal home book collections? Our PTO is looking to give out books to students in honor of their birthday--"Birthday Book Program". We have heard of a number of schools who donate the books to the school library for everyone to enjoy, but we do that also. We would like to get away from hosting a little party each month for the birthday kids (they might not know anyone else having a birthday that month, it could be one kindergartener with all upper classmen and therefore, very intimidating, etc.) and last year we provided them with little goodie bags (stickers, pencils, trinkets, etc.), but the meaning of the gift was pretty much lost--and the parents saw it as just another bunch of little things that they would either need to pick up or would clog the vaccuum cleaner when invariably left around the house!

The Board coming in for next year is very committed to helping to promote literacy and this is the way we would like to get the ball rolling. Anyone that knows of book sellers or publishers that would be willing to provide for a student body of roughly 500, I would appreciate hearing about them!

I have heard of the Scholastic program where you can get books for $2.00 each, but if we can save our cash and spend it on other desperately needed things all the better!

Tahnsk in advance!

MicheleC
Connecticut

Michelle, Hi. I don't know if this will help you or not but have you thought about Personalized Books for your students? They are very easy to do and fairly inexpensive, usually. I am a dealer myself but cannot help as I am in Indiana but you can reach a dealer in East Lyme, CT at EMAIL- pertchpub@aol.com ,if you're interested. The idea is that on their birthday each student would receive a birthday themed book published including their name, 3 friends and their home town. the dedication page in the front could read " happy birthday from (your school's) PTO. You could get 1-2 community sponsors to cover the costs and those name could appear in the front of the book too!(free ads for them!). Hope This helps!

Hi Michelle,
There is a program called Rolling Readers where adult volunteers read for 30 minutes a week to a class and the students in that class each receive a book to keep. This used to be given out three times a year. There is fundraising to pay for the book donations and I'm not sure of all the details, but I can try to get you a phone number to contact. It is a nice program because someone other than the teacher comes into the classroom and reads to the children. They all really look forward to this time and are very appreciative. It shows that there are many types of people who value reading and books.

Hi Again Michelle,
I quickly looked up on the internet and found the website for Rolling Readers. It gives a great history of their organization and all the information you would need to either contact someone in your area or start up a program for your area. The address is http://www.rollingreaders.com/history.html and again it is really a worthwhile effort. Not only do you get to give the gift of a book to the children, but they get the gift of the personal touch of the stories that are read to them. Good luck.