First Book’s National Book Bank team just got home from Pittsburgh, where they boxed, labeled and shipped 400,000 books to kids in need all over the country, from Jacksonville to Santa Monica.
That’s a whole lot of books – five tractor-trailers full, to put it in perspective. The books all came from Disney Publishing Worldwide, and included some great titles, like ‘Island of the Blue Dolphins’, ‘The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks’, ‘Caterpillar’s Springtime Day’, and books starring characters beloved by many children, like Handy Manny, Mickey Mouse and Hannah Montana.
Shipping that many books in less than a week is a big job, and we couldn’t possibly have done it without the help of some great friends who came out to lend a hand. Volunteers like the local high school Key Club, college students, a Girl Scout troop (they were amazing on sticker duty) and service-minded individuals of all stripes. Not to mention the team from a local KPMG office, whose accounting skills were put to excellent use. KPMG is a major supporter of First Book, and we can always count on their local offices to help us out.
And, perhaps most importantly, our hosts at World Vision, a truly inspirational organization that provides badly-needed resources to children and families in the United States and around the world who have been victims of natural disasters, famine, war and disease. Because First Book has no warehouses, we rely on donated space to temporarily house the books donated to us by generous publishers, and World Vision stepped up to help out in Pittsburgh. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer, friendlier, more helpful bunch of people to work with.
The best part of our book distributions, though, is getting to meet some of the local schools and programs who take our books back to the children that they serve. They always thank us when we fill their trucks and station wagons with cartons of new books, but we tell them that they’re the ones who deserve the thanks. It’s a privilege to help them in the heroic work that they do to each and every day.
So hats off to Pittsburgh. We couldn’t have done it without you!
Elizabeth had told me I would love THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS, by E. Lockhart. Not just that it was a great book, but that I particularly would love it, and she couldn’t tell me why because that would ruin it, but trust her.
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Oh my heavens, I loved this book too. It’s one of the few books I’ve read twice in a few months. Every moment of it was brilliant. I was so surprised to see that Rachael Cohn didn’t choose it to go on in the SLJ Battle of the Books in part because she thought the language/puns/neglected positives were a bit pretentious.
I need to read this!! And Language Log needs to post about it!!
What was your made-up word?
This looks really good! What cute conversations ^_^
…So what was the word you made up for your senior thesis?
Also: My post about Frankie’s Feminism is coming, but not tomorrow. All of my posts have been delayed somewhat by my being at the Population Association of America annual conference, for which I have created the Largest Demography Poster in the History of Posters or Populations. I don’t believe that this can end well, but I believe it may well be highly amusing.
However, I am very glad that Emily has gotten us started on Frankie, because we’ve talked about blogging about it forever, and now I’ll finally be able to return my copy and have the library stop sending me death threats.
I’ve been trying to remember what the made-up word in my thesis was, and I’m absolutely drawing a blank, although I remember clearly the argument I had with a friend who was proofreading for me about why no other word would suffice.
Someone posted about the fun language in their review and it’s the reason I picked up the book. Loved it!
One of the nice things about philosophy as an academic field is that there is utter freedom to make up words. Exercising this freedom is usually the funnest part of writing philosophy papers, for me. (Maybe that’s why I’m not a philospher, though.)
Of course, these being philosophers, this sometimes means annoying and pretentious Latin words for basic concepts. Like explananda for “that which is being explained” and explanans for “that which is doing the explaining.” Gruntled and ept are so much superior.
The INPs were definitely my favorite part of the book, in that happy squeal way. I babbled about them to countless people, and I think I’ve worked more into my conversation (or at least my thoughts). Pugn is a favorite.
Gruntled, as you may have guessed, is one of my favorites. Also, ept, because its kind of fun to say. Plus its close to “apt” and whenever I hear (or think) apt, I hear in my head Lisa Simpson yelling “Its apt!”
I think about INPs frequently, and always think about how I should use them more often, but I’m not sure if I actually have been using them.
[...] Why I love it: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks [...]
Yay! That’s the reason I loved it too.