Bookmobile News

We were thrilled to receive the news that First 5 Sonoma County has awarded the Free Bookmobile our largest grant to date, fully funding our request.  First 5 invests in Sonoma County’s youngest children by funding programs and services that promote, support, and improve the early development of children from the prenatal stage through age five.

We have already been effective in getting books into the hands of these children, and will be significantly more so once we are traveling the county in a serious vehicle.  We can commit to enhanced service to this age group due to the anticipated ease of visiting multiple locations each outing.  How can you help?  We will soon need more books appropriate for this age group!  It’s always been a challenge for us to keep these stocks healthy, so please consider who might have baby- and toddler-appropriate books to offer us.  We also welcome proposals on the best locations to reach low-income youngsters in particular.

Really, is it too much to ask that it rain only during the week?  We’re all in favor of welcoming the precious precipitation that our state needs but it sure is disappointing when it cancels our give-away days on the weekends.  We were especially frustrated to see the Head Start Welcome Day at Finley Park cut short due to weather concerns.  Hopefully a bit more funding will soon come our way so we can purchase an enclosed-style bookmobile.  Of course we would have needed a tugboat to do our scheduled business in Cotati last weekend.

On the balance, the weather has been quite cooperative over the span of our 16-month history.  There were a number of occasions last winter on which we benefited from an extremely timely interlude of sunshine amongst the rain.  So lest we appear ungrateful, let us just say “We welcome the blessings of the rainfall that provide us with crucial drinking water, irrigation, and more, especially when it arrives between the hours of 12 and 4 Am”.

KRCB’s Bruce Robinson happily happened upon us in Forestville last month and was so inspired by what he saw that he invited us to come interview for the station’s “North Bay Report” radio show.  Free Bookmobile Director Glen Weaver spoke about the origins of the project and how things have been growing steadily since then.  He also mentions the joys of  participating with the good people of Sonoma County.

The polished version can be heard online at:

http://krcb.org/free-bookmobile

Enjoy, and please pass the link to your friends!

We are pleased to announce that, due to the popularity of the Sonoma County Free Bookmobile, we now need helping hands to maintain the highest quality service for our growing numbers of patrons.  We are onto something great here, and we hope that you’ll lend a little of your time and energy.

Here are the current volunteer positions.  We will keep this list updated via a download link on our “Help Us!” page on the bookmobile website.

Book Donation Delivery Driver - Pick up boxes of book donations from various collection sites in Santa Rosa and Windsor.  Bring them to bookmobile staff in Sebastopol or directly to events.

Event Research - Find dates and contact information for specific events appropriate for bookmobile partnership.

Shelving Builder – Obtain materials and build custom shelving in the book storage unit.

Book Drive Coordinator - Organize and coordinate drives to solicit donations of books for the bookmobile.

Event Helper - Greet patrons, help them browse, restock shelves, set up and take down tables and canopy.

Behind the Scenes - Other work utilizing your special talents!

For more information about these opportunities, contact Glen: Glen@sonic.net or call 520-4536.  And thank you for your continued support!

We are delighted to announce our third mini-grant win (3 for 3!).  The good folks at the Santa Rosa Community Advisory Board (CAB) support many kinds of grassroots projects.  After considering our written proposal and listening to our oral presentation, the CAB voted to endorse our drive to purchase a bigger bookmobile.  Many thanks to Ed Buonaccorsi, Jo Anne Cohn, and the rest of their team for seeking to improve opportunities for the low-income residents of Santa Rosa.  We enjoy serving these families at locations like Landpath’s Bayer Farm, Indian Health Clinic, and the Head Start Program.

This greatly expands our ability to purchase a quality vehicle, for which we are on the lookout!  It turns out there are some delivery-truck type conversions out there that don’t quite fit the bill.  Generally the center aisle is too narrow and these trucks lack a wheelchair lift or ramp.  So the search continues as well as the efforts to raise additional funds.

Healdsburg’s own Merriam Vineyards surprised us with very good news indeed: the Free Bookmobile will benefit from their upcoming Books and Bordeaux “back-to-school book swap for grown-ups”.  We think it’s a fabulous idea, and apparently, so does local culinary artist Michelle Anna Jordan, who will be in attendance.  Other authors are being recruited for signings and an afternoon of “good reds and good reads”.  You even get delicate bites which have been paired with the vineyards current releases for your $10 tasting fee. 

After all the swapping is done, we get the extra books to take on our travels around the county.  Another great partnership!  Take a look at the Merriam website for more information about the event, which takes place Saturday, September 18.

The big event for the Free Bookmobile in September is always the Sonoma County Book Festival on Old Courthouse Square.  Downtown Santa Rosa is transformed into a reader’s mecca, with devotees coming from near and far to meet authors, hear poetry, enjoy live performances, and browse books!  You’ll have to check out the website to see the amazing line-up featured at this years event, which gets underway at 10 Am on Saturday, September 25:

http://socobookfest.org/

Though we won’t be giving away books there, we will be hosting a colorful information booth to help raise awareness of our mission.  We will also have a couple of terrific silent auction items up for bid: a delicious dinner for four cooked in your home, with poetry recital during dessert, compliments of The Gourmet Poet, and a scenic three-hour sailing trip for four on a 33′ sloop in Bodega Bay by Bodega Bay Sailing Adventures.

The Book Festival is a very family friendly event, so don’t forget the kids!  See you soon…

Thanks to the efforts of Free Bookmobile supporter Dena Bliss, we now have that long-awaited drop-off site for west county residents!  Dena talked to the nice folks at Sonoma Bank and they agreed that collecting books for us was a great idea.  We installed a box last week and are up and running!  Not only has Dena contributed substantially to the project but this kind of participation by the community really inspires us to reach for that next milestone.

Sonoma Bank is easy to find.  It’s across from Rite Aid one block north of the downtown shops, in the Whole Foods shopping center.  Please help us fill the box so we can keep promoting literacy and love of reading!  We are in particular need of children’s picture books, as well as quality non-fiction.  Of course we need all kinds to keep our service going…

Thank you!

Yesterday we were the proud representatives of the Sonoma County Book Festival as we partnered with artists in Occidental and Bayer Farm in Roseland to kickoff the ArtsSonoma ’10 Festival.  This festival has a great concept, as evidenced by this snip from their website (http://www.artssonoma.com):

“ArtsSonoma encourages artists and arts organizations to go ‘outside of the box’ and stretch the imaginations of the public as to art, what it is and where it happens.  It is our belief that art can happen anywhere, from a cattle yard to a symphony hall, in shop fronts and in theaters, in clubs and on the rocky ridges of Bodega Head.  To that end we have tried to encourage, with some success, artists to try to do what they do where they don’t.”

Melissa Kelley of the Book Festival put together a great double-billing for us: We started the day in sunny Occidental near Howard’s Cafe, as author Barbara Quick read from her book “Vivaldi’s Virgin’s” accompanied by San Francisco Symphony violist Wayne Roden.  This was terrific guerrilla-theater stuff as we gave away hundreds of books while folks enjoyed an immersive classical  experience – outdoors!  At noon we raced off to a much warmer Bayer Farm, the community garden in the middle of Roseland that offers low-income urban families the opportunity to grow their own fruits and vegetables.  More than a hundred adults and young children had gathered to see the charming antics of Carnival of Chaos.   It was a very funny, and thrilling, show and afterward we had the privilege of sending the kids away with armloads of books, in both English and Spanish.

Special thanks to Jeremy Young, of Young Massage, who loaned us his truck to tow the bookmobile at the last minute – the usual steed is in the shop!  And to Carrie Hess, who worked really hard to make lots of people happy at these events.  She’s a tremendous volunteer on board the Free Bookmobile, and even made a special batch of her whimsical bookmarks to give away alongside the books.

“Sonoma County’s Community Newspaper”, written by readers, has published coverage of the Free Bookmobile’s first anniversary.  The free print edition is available now at select locations throughout the county, and you can check out the article, penned by our own Melissa Kelley, online at:

http://sonomacountygazette.com/editions/wcg201008_048.pdf

We have plans to continue broadening our service in 2010-2011, especially as we consider what’s possible with a bigger bookmobile!  We were honored to recently receive a number of cash donations toward this near-term goal from Book Festival fans.  Thank you so much for your continued support.

Meanwhile, be sure to check out our fall schedule.  Lots of fun ahead!