I’m addicted to books, especially children’s books. Every time my son brings home a Scholastic Book Order form (once a month or more!), we go crazy. The problem is we struggle to find room for the new books when they arrive. The shelves in his room are jam-packed and so are the shelves in the living room. Last month I finally realized something had to give, so I bit the proverbial bullet and set about purging the collection.
I saved all the chapter books and nonfiction, a few paperback series my son still reads on occasion (those “Little Critter” books don’t take up much room!), and a few board books I couldn’t bear to part with (“The Going to Bed Book,” which my husband and I read every night for the first few years of our son’s life and can still quote verbatim, for example).
Then I came to the hard-cover picture books with their beautiful pictures and delightful read-aloud stories. That stopped me cold. How could I bear to part with them?
Then it hit me. If these books mean so much to my son and me, yet we have so many they get lost in the clutter and rarely read, what would they mean to kids without their own extensive libraries? Eureka!
I started packing boxes for the Community Transitional School, a private school serving children whose families are homeless, in transition and/or experiencing chronic poverty-related crises. As long as I visualized other children discovering these books for the first time, children who might cherish them even more than we have, it was easy to purge the collection. In fact, packing up the cream of the crop gave me the most pleasure.
For more information about the Community Transitional School and how you can support their programs, visit www.transitionalschool.org.
Posted by Emily

November 12th, 2008 | Category: Metro Parent