Our partner organization, The Writers' Loft and Little Book Locker are teaming up with two other non-profits, Haverhill Promise and Whittier Birthplace. Haverhill Promise tries to get kids up to grade-level in their reading, and John Greenleaf Whittier ("Whate'er his life's defeatures, he loved his fellow creatures") was a poet and abolitionist.
I am gathering a group of local authors from the books on the poster to read their poems to kids. We will then give each child a copy of the poetry anthology, An Assortment of Animals. Sounds super fun, right?
It will be, we've done this before. We have plastic animals to play with while you're listening and poem-making popsicle sticks for after. It's so, so fun.
It's a gamble, putting this out there ahead of time, announcing that we'll be giving away books, knowing how many people read the last blog post (0 according to my Wix stats page). We may be flooded with attendees and run out of books! But I'll risk it because the poster is so nicely done by Jessica, the head honcho at Haverhill Promise, who's idea this endeavor was. Jessica is also providing the snacks: animal crackers. (Fun!)
Did I write the second paragraph of this post because, on this particular morning, I felt like using the phrase "flooded with attendees" and the word "endeavor"?
Maybe.
I'm a writer. That's how we amuse ourselves whether we have readers or not.
A small detail about me (Kristen), (it's nearly always Kristen), about 20 years ago when I started writing funny things on my family Christmas card, I did it because that was the only time I knew for certain that dozens of people were reading my writing. It turned out that people loved my Christmas card and laughed out loud or shared it with the family over dinner. They would tell me, "Kristen, I always enjoy your Christmas card."
So you never know who is reading something, when they are reading it, or how much they will like it.
Or in the case of a LBL blog post, how much money they might donate so you can buy more books to give to children who don't have many books at home because 100% of your budget goes to buying books.
Children's poetry is what got me into this business of loving words and phrases, so I hope it rubs off on the children who do show up at Whittier Birthplace on August tenth because they will (shhh) get free books!