International Book Giving Day 2014

We think that there's something very exciting about giving and receiving books and that's before you even start reading them. Today is International Book Giving Day, which aims to get books into the hands of as many children as possible. So, we've been busy doing that.

Random House Children's Publishers offered us three copies of RJ Palacio's Wonder to give away. We've bought this book for oursevles, we've bought it as gifts for others and our teen book group has reviewed it too. We love Wonder and its 'choose kind' theme so of course we said, "YES, PLEASE!"

This got us thinking. We'd do three givings. Each book pack would have a copy of Wonder and some old review copies that we no longer have space for at home (and from publishers who are happy for us to pass them on). We would aim to reach many children and we'd give books to someone who was 'being kind'.


Our first pack went to Thornton Grammar School. I met Thornton's literacy leader last summer when I volunteered on the pilot scheme for Booktrust's Summer Active programme. This programme aims to support children's literacy during the summer of transition from primary school to secondary school. The programme was great fun, the children were great to work with, and they loved being surprised with book gifts. They've now implemented DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) where students read in form time (and in the library).

Our second pack was a contribution to a Year 7 Readathon. Their month long Readathon is also doubling as a charity fundraiser (and readers of this blog will know how much we love readathons). And our third pack went to a community cafe which supports adults with learning difficulties.

We loved giving these books. We hope everyone enjoys opening their packs and exploring the different books. And then we hope they'll enjoy the stories.