Spreading the Love (of Books and Reading)

I dearly wanted to do a post for Family Literacy Day, which was January 27, but I have a very full plate at the moment. I am pleased to report though, that, inspired by a comment by a fellow writer, I instigated a free bookshelf at our local elementary school. I know that many of our local kids have few, or even no, books of their own. So we got a lovely bookshelf built at the entrance to the school and it is now laden with gently-used, donated children's books that kids can take for their own. They can keep them if they want or share them or return them. No questions. I'll have a wander over later to see it in action.

In this spirit of sharing books and all things wordy, here are a few of my favourite book sharing ideas. You've probably heard of Book Crossing -- it's been around for awhile now, but I love the idea of "unleashing" books into the world to an unsuspecting public. Who can resist a "Catch and Release" map for books? Oh, and they have all sorts of goodies, including some of the most beautiful bookplates.

And then there's this brilliant collaborative experiment, 1000 Journals Project, where 1000 blank journals were unleashed on the world by "Some Guy." You can see some of the pages here and, of course, there is a book with some of the best entries of the past six years.