After nutrition, and before manners (yes, Emily – even MORE important than manners), is reading. Literacy can save a life and, more than that – a soul. Books are a companion, a passport to far off lands, a magic mirror into which we can peer into the past or future, the things of revolution, the things of a rainy afternoon. If you love books, you will never truly be alone. If you can read – you can achieve anything. You can toss every bloody telly and computer into the Thames – we will continue with out them. But without the written word – the Dark Ages again.
So, let’s say that you just had a baby. You will receive, at the very least: 3 copies of Harold and the Purple Crayon, 6 of Goodnight Moon and doubles of every single Dr. Seuss book ever published. These, along with those cookbooks that you tend to buy after the latest Top Chef series and perhaps those exercise books that you order every January, are collecting dust somewhere in your house, unused and unloved. Is that fair to the books?
It is not.
And now that you have OnDemand or AppleTV, do you really need that DVD collection anymore? I mean should any self respecting woman have more movies than shoes?
I thought not.
But to whom to donate these books and movies? It’s really not the sort of thing you usually drop off with those bags of clothes.
Well, in Chicago, the answer is Open Books! Open Books is a resale bookstore that sells your used books and DVD’s and then employs the profits in offering wonderful literacy programs to thousands of students across the Chicagoland area. Honestly. Can you think of a nicer place for those extra copies of Goodnight, Gorilla and the G.I. Diet to end up?
Not only will Open Books take your unloved books and DVD’s – they will pick them up! So lovely of them, really.
My two large bags are by my door.
You’re it.
-"The Green Stork" Claire Douglass is a first time Chicago mom, concerned with ever increasing data connecting childhood health issues from asthma to autism to exposure to common household toxins, chemicals and air quality – seeks to detoxify her nest, and create as green a nursery and playroom as possible.Without driving herself, or her husband, crazy. The former is going far better than the latter.
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