Bookmobile News

The dynamic and philanthropic women of Impact100 Sonoma have awarded the Free Bookmobile a grant to purchase a carport-style vehicle shelter! This will protect the bookmobile from both sun and rain, helping ensure it will be around for many more years of service to the good citizens of Sonoma County. Impact100 is a wonderful grass-roots giving organization — “Women giving as one” — in which everyone who participates gets an equal vote on how hundreds of thousands of dollars are distributed each year. You can read more about Impact100 and the other 2013 award winners here: http://sonoma.towns.pressdemocrat.com/2013/07/news/impact100-sonoma-awards-228000-in-grants/

Free Bookmobile Director Glen Weaver in good company with the rest of the Impact100 Sonoma 2013 Community Grant Award Winners, plus Community Grants Chair Lorraine Ashton and outgoing president B.J. Bischoff at right

Okay, folks, it’s time to rally to help our sister program! The Sonoma County Book Festival is dedicated to bringing authors and readers together in an outdoor celebration of books and literacy, which it has done for the past 12 years. It’s been a glorious contribution to our county but what you may not know is that we’ve done it on a wing and a prayer. And at this juncture, our funds are low and our volunteers are tired. As the board of directors, we’ve had to ask ourselves, “Do we stop offering this incredible community celebration of books and literacy?” The answer came back as a loud, “Heck no!” The Festival and our community deserve more. In fact, we believe we can make the Festival even better for 2013. Here’s the plan:

* The 2013 Book Festival on Saturday, September 21, is moving to the outdoor courtyard at the Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa  Rosa so all of the Festival offerings are in one spot (and it’s a beautiful spot!).

* We are partnering with our local independent bookseller, Copperfield’s Books, to bring an amazing line-up of nationally acclaimed authors while still showcasing our wonderful local authors.

* We’ll continue to provide presentations, workshops, and a slew of children’s activities in an all-day event that you won’t want to miss and that will remain absolutely FREE.

What do we need? Funding for an executive director who will coordinate all the good things you expect from the festival and help execute our big plans. Currently, we are running on the graces of our board of directors, all volunteers committed to the Festival who are hoping Kickstarter will save the day.

Here’s the idea. Let’s OWN our literary tradition here in Sonoma County. Let’s COMMIT to a better Book Festival where books and authors are celebrated and entry is free to all. Your donation makes that happen. This is one of those instances where you personally benefit from your contribution, AND the whole community benefits as well. We have 30 days to decide, will Sonoma County keep its Book Festival? We ask you to LOVE YOUR FEST and make a contribution:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1516845627/sonoma-county-book-festival

Thank you!

The Free Bookmobile is now registered with First Book, and you can help us make terrific, high-value book purchases! For the past 20 years, First Book has done a great job of getting new books into the hands of children in need. By making a tax-deductible donation to the Free Bookmobile (see the “Help Us!” page on our website at http://freebookmobile.org/) with a note to “Purchase Books”, you can fund us to buy quality new titles at an incredible discount to plug gaps in our supply. Then we’ll give them away to children in need here in Sonoma County!

Even $10 or $20 can buy many books. Right now, for example, Rick Riordan’s Kane Chronicles bestsellers are available for just over $1 each! These are great to entice resistant middle-schoolers to discover the fun of adventure stories. Science & nature, early readers and bilingual books are also available. Can you spare a few dollars to help us boost our shelves?

75,000 books given away! 25,000 children, adults and seniors served! Talk about spreading the love…we just hit another big milestone to celebrate with you. Thank you for helping us reach out and put books into homes. Thank you for making adventures in literacy a reality for so many who are challenged for access!

We humans can do such wonderful things when we work together in a positive spirit and the Free Bookmobile is yet more proof of this simple truth. It started as simple guerrilla community service, as we barged into parks and parking lots to spread the good word (see photo – yes, that is a pop-up book featuring the Golden Gate Bridge) Now, thanks to all who have joined in, we are doing really important work and helping improve lives. Cheers!

Not a bad way to round out your afternoon in the park

Thank you, Petaluma Community Foundation! We are thrilled to announce a new grant win, first-time support for the Free Bookmobile by PCF. They were impressed with our previous outreach to many of their current partners and stepped forward to ensure a continued strong bookmobile presence throughout Petaluma this coming year. We love working in the area and look forward to PCF’s partnership to make our service even better.

PCF will be honoring its grantees at a special gala dinner and dancing event on April 20th, which is also a fundraiser to make sure they can continue their important work. Please consider supporting PCF so they can support the rest of us. Tickets are on sale now at www.petalumacf.org.

After quite a bit of sleuthing around, we finally caught some luck with a kind lead from Patti England at Impact100 Sonoma, with whom we partner on our work in the Sonoma Valley area. She indicated that her son Jeff might be able to help and sure enough, he was happy to set up our latest book donation box at his 76 gas station at West Napa and 2nd Streets downtown. Located just one block west of the historic plaza, Sonoma 76 should be a convenient spot for residents to come donate the best of their collections!

Due to space considerations, you may not see our usual donation box in the lobby but just let the attendant know you want to drop off books for the Free Bookmobile. They’ll keep them in the back storage room for us until we make the pick-up. The Sonoma site is our sixth location throughout the county, and the first to serve the southeast region. The other five can be viewed through the “Donate Books” link on our website.

Sonoma 76 Station

195 West Napa Street, Sonoma (996-3555)

MON – SAT 8 Am – 7 Pm  &  SUN 10 Am – 5 Pm

From the north, take Highway 12 south to West Napa Street, following it east into downtown. From the east or south, head toward the Sonoma Plaza and continue west another block on West Napa. Station is at SE corner of intersection with 2nd Street.

The Free Bookmobile has always benefited greatly from the contributions of folks who believe in our mission. Ron Hass contacted us after seeing our request in the Press Democrat for help with sorting book donations, so it’s fitting that he should be the subject of a volunteer profile in that same newspaper after two years of amazing service!

Ron believes in reading and loves to help others find books of interest. To that end, he has been on the road picking up our book donations, sorting at our storage facility for categorization and featured placement, and making himself available for whatever else the Free Bookmobile needs to continue operating smoothly. We know that when he’s on the job, there will be a high quality result, and we’re most grateful! Check out the full story and picture here:

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20130317/articles/130319689&tc=yahoo?tc=ar

Chocolate and Cinema – the yummiest night of the year! It was a chance for us to meet up with friends both new and old, show off the bookmobile’s new paint, and celebrate literacy services in Sonoma County. The star of the show was undoubtedly the marvelous chocolate, offered in abundance by the area’s best: Patisserie Angelica, Moustache Baked Goods, Sjaak’s Organic, Viva Cocolat, Divine Delights, Downtown Bakery & Creamery (Healdsburg), Bianchi’s Bake Shop, J.M. Rosen’s, Sonoma Chocolatiers, Oliver’s Market and Whole Foods of Sebastopol. Huge thanks for these generous donations! Photos of the event can be seen on our Facebook page by clicking here.

We are also very grateful to our host on the evening, Ky Boyd of Rialto Cinemas, and to our fundraising partner, the Sonoma County Public Library Foundation. And we couldn’t have brought everyone together without the tireless efforts of Literary Arts Guild board member Stacy Ruppert. Stacy is featured in previous bookmobile news posts posing with the thousands of children’s books she brought in over the past two summers. Now we know she can throw a great literacy party…so what’s next? Stay tuned to find out!

The Big Read is on! For the month of March, the Free Bookmobile is proud to once again partner with KRCB Public Media to promote awareness of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. There are many educational and celebratory events happening throughout the month, which you can read about on KRCB’s Big Read website page and on their Facebook page.  The National Endowment for the Arts has some terrific background information on Dickinson’s work, which you can access by clicking here.

We will have books of her prose available free to patrons (while supplies last), including reader’s guides and children’s books about her life. We also have a selection of five different Poems in My Pocket you can take with you. Come see us in March and learn more about an American legend!

Book drive in progress! We are fortunate to often benefit from collection drives conducted by schools and other membership groups. This one’s open to everyone! Thanks to the hard-working folks at Umpqua Bank, the Free Bookmobile will be the recipient of a collection they are now making at their 1322 Fourth Street branch in downtown Santa Rosa. Their community spirit is catching and now other businesses on Santa Rosa Square are participating! Please bring the best of your gently used books to Umpqua by Thursday, March 21, when we will pick up donations AND host a public give-away inside the Free Bookmobile from 3 – 5 Pm. All are welcome  :)