Bookmobile News

We are experiencing our first shortage!  Though we are always in need of high quality books in all categories, we are especially in need of books for young readers (0 – 8 years of age) at the moment, especially large-format picture books that adults and kids often read together.  We are rationing the few we have left but that is not our style – we prefer to send every child away with an armful!

Please take a few minutes to go through the kids’ rooms and box up whatever they are ready to share.  Including our newest drop-off location in Windsor, we now have five locations around the county to which you can bring them.  Check our “Donate Books” page on the website for full addresses.  If none are convenient, please don’t hesitate to email me and we can arrange a meeting or pickup.

We are also often in need of: recent adolescent/teen literature, dictionaries, and foreign language titles (especially in Spanish).

Thank you so very much for your participation!

Thanks to the Windsor Chamber of Commerce and Free Bookmobile supporters Wendy and Rick Langhals, we are delighted to announce that The UPS Store in Windsor has become a partner in hosting a book donation drop-off box.  The Langhals run a clean, well-stocked store in the Safeway shopping center (between Brooks Road South and Lakewood Drive) in downtown Windsor.  The hours are good as well: 8:30 – 6:30 Pm weekdays, and 9 Am – 5 Pm on Saturday.  Full details, including donation guidelines, are listed on our “Donate Books” page, now accessible directly from the front page of our website.

This is a real boost for us as we previously had no north county presence.  We hope this will make it a lot easier for everyone to contribute!

We’ve been having a great time talking to our patrons about The Big Read as we give away copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  We particularly enjoyed our time with The Friends of the Petaluma River a couple of weeks ago.  Though younger readers aren’t as familiar with Mark Twain as was my generation, they are usually game for checking it out, and it never hurts to have reminiscing adults near by to describe all the fun they had with the book.

Over at Big Read headquarters, the National Endowment for the Arts folks took notice of the Free Bookmobile’s “Mark Twain Exchange” and conducted a brief interview.  You can check it out at:

http://www.arts.gov/bigreadblog

Though the formal project runs through April, we are, of course, The Big Read all year long!  We’ll be giving away Twain for as long as the good people of Sonoma County keep recycling him through our little trailer…

We have been blessed with strong community support since the beginning.  Even when all we had was an idea, plenty of kind individuals stepped forward to give books, money, time, labor, and well wishes for our project.  Now that we are doing the good deed, we have lots of gratitude to express for the help that makes it all possible.  In honor of our strongest partners, we have published a page that allows visitors to see just who is behind our success.  Please take a moment to check out our “Partners” (a new option on the main sidebar menu) and read about these terrific folks.  You can also click through to their websites to learn more about the individual missions – perhaps even get involved!

We also tuned up our “About Us” page a bit.  As we play with new web design software, the entire site will gradually be enhanced.

We love good press with pretty pictures!  The Sonoma West Times & News, which also publishes The Healdsburg Tribune and The Windsor Times, ran a nice story about The Big Read this week.  As you may have seen in a previous posts, The Big Read is a nationwide effort to boost literacy and get folks talking about a great book.  This year’s project centers around Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the Free Bookmobile has broadened the appeal by featuring any and all books penned by Twain.

The Sonoma West article covers the ‘mobile prominently, with some great shots of happy patrons picking up books and reader’s guides.  I’m partial to the print version myself, which I believe is running in all three versions of the paper, and you can see the online version here:

http://www.sonomawest.com/articles/2010/04/02/living/doc4bb3c4feeb590287791079.txt

Remember to keep donating all your extra Twain to us so we can spread the love throughout the month of April and beyond!