Watch this space for more information about what to expect at the South Side Gallery & Book Fair. El Puente is putting together a nice roster of literacy and art workshops for the event.
Also coming soon: our spiffy new flier!
In the meantime, mark your calendars:
South Side Gallery & Book Fair
Saturday April 5th, 12-4PM
Williamsburg Leadership Center
211 S. 4th Street, Williamsburg
Thursday, March 20, 2008
How You Can Help
1) By DONATING BOOKS. If you work for a literary agency or publishing company, take up a book collection for the event. Any new K-8th Grade books would be greatly desired! Whether they be hot-off-the-presses copies of high-demand titles or spare author copies, remainder copies, old advance copies...we want as many (new, or SO 'like-new' we won't be able to tell the difference) books as we can get! Box 'em up and send 'em to: El Puente Williamsburg Leadership Center, 211 S. 4th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Make sure to send them such that they arrive no later than April 4th!*
(*Though direct shipping is preferable, we will be happy to arrange door-to-door pickups for large quantities of books within the tri-state area! Contact Bob Berens at (917) 202-1702 for pickups, or email him at bobberens at gmail dot com.)
2) By BUYING BOOKS. We've set up an Amazon Wish List/Gift Registry with a target list of time-honored classic books for kids, ALA and YALSA recommended kids books, and books specifically requested by our target community. Contributing spanking-new titles to the event is only a mouseclick away, whether you can give one book or a hundred books...click here: South Side Book Fair.
Again, please arrange for shipping that will arrive by April 4th!
If you find other online sources for these same books, or would like contribute K-8th books you don't see represented on the registry, go for it! Part of the fun is picking which books you'd like to reach an eager, grateful audience! Just be sure to use the address above, and to arrange shipping in time for the event!
3) By SPREADING THE WORD. If you know other publishing folk please pass this on and encourage book donations; if you know any YA or childrens book authors dying to offload excess author copies, give them instructions for how to share. These books will find an eager audience.
El Puente is committed to getting as many kids to the event as possible, from all the local and neighboring public schools...our job is to get as many books as possible to the event! The more books we have on hand, the more kids we can include!
(*Though direct shipping is preferable, we will be happy to arrange door-to-door pickups for large quantities of books within the tri-state area! Contact Bob Berens at (917) 202-1702 for pickups, or email him at bobberens at gmail dot com.)
2) By BUYING BOOKS. We've set up an Amazon Wish List/Gift Registry with a target list of time-honored classic books for kids, ALA and YALSA recommended kids books, and books specifically requested by our target community. Contributing spanking-new titles to the event is only a mouseclick away, whether you can give one book or a hundred books...click here: South Side Book Fair.
Again, please arrange for shipping that will arrive by April 4th!
If you find other online sources for these same books, or would like contribute K-8th books you don't see represented on the registry, go for it! Part of the fun is picking which books you'd like to reach an eager, grateful audience! Just be sure to use the address above, and to arrange shipping in time for the event!
3) By SPREADING THE WORD. If you know other publishing folk please pass this on and encourage book donations; if you know any YA or childrens book authors dying to offload excess author copies, give them instructions for how to share. These books will find an eager audience.
El Puente is committed to getting as many kids to the event as possible, from all the local and neighboring public schools...our job is to get as many books as possible to the event! The more books we have on hand, the more kids we can include!
The Mission
The South Side Gallery & Book Fair is a community event bringing FREE, NEW books to the school-aged (K-8th) children of Williamsburg and Bushwick. By collecting unused paperbacks from NYC publishers, editors, and readers and by soliciting online donations of new books, the day will provide these kids with a vast range of high-quality books…to keep.
Books are not the most out-of-reach or in-demand luxury items for neighborhood kids. Maybe an X-Box 360 (600$) or a pair of limited edition sneakers (150$ or so) would fit that bill. And local libraries already serve a vital role in providing kids with reading material. But the pleasure and luxury of book ownership-- keeping it by one's bed, putting it up on a shelf or on top of one's dresser as a badge of honor – 'I read that' – is a rich and rewarding stage in the development of any lifelong reader. For cash-strapped parents, it can be perfectly sensible to strike the cost of buying new books from their household budgets; for media-addled kids, the choice between using whatever disposable income they have for clothes, food, and flashier entertainment options like music or movies is, unfortunately or not, even easier to make.
That's where our book fair steps in: a one-day event for kids and their parents to browse from and freely choose high quality books to take home: picture books for the early readers, young reader paperbacks, YA novels, classics, etc.
Any books remaining at day's end will be divided between local community organizations, schools, libraries, and the Prisoners Reading Encouragement Project.
Books are not the most out-of-reach or in-demand luxury items for neighborhood kids. Maybe an X-Box 360 (600$) or a pair of limited edition sneakers (150$ or so) would fit that bill. And local libraries already serve a vital role in providing kids with reading material. But the pleasure and luxury of book ownership-- keeping it by one's bed, putting it up on a shelf or on top of one's dresser as a badge of honor – 'I read that' – is a rich and rewarding stage in the development of any lifelong reader. For cash-strapped parents, it can be perfectly sensible to strike the cost of buying new books from their household budgets; for media-addled kids, the choice between using whatever disposable income they have for clothes, food, and flashier entertainment options like music or movies is, unfortunately or not, even easier to make.
That's where our book fair steps in: a one-day event for kids and their parents to browse from and freely choose high quality books to take home: picture books for the early readers, young reader paperbacks, YA novels, classics, etc.
Any books remaining at day's end will be divided between local community organizations, schools, libraries, and the Prisoners Reading Encouragement Project.
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