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The First Book team just got back from Brattleboro, Vermont, where we distributed 350,000 brand-new books to kids in need. About 100,000 of those books went to local teachers and community leaders, and the rest were shipped out to schools and programs serving kids from low-income families across the country.

The books were donated by our friends at Disney Publishing Worldwide, and included quite a few fairy and princess titles.

“There were four of us, and we worked, worked, and worked,” said Katie Niersbach, who led the team in Vermont. “Fairy books are HEAVY.”

The distribution was made possible thanks to the support of the Vermont Foodbank, who provided warehouse space and volunteers, and also received a large number of books to distribute to the children served by their centers throughout the state.

Also richly-deserving of our thanks is Carolyn Appleton, a Vermont teacher and community activist who signed up over 80 new programs to help them get books from First Book and fed our staff and volunteers ice cream. (She’s also the mother of one of our staffers, but that only makes us love her more.)

So a big ‘thank you’ to Carolyn and to all our friends at Disney and the Vermont Foodbank, and an even bigger thanks to all the educators – in Vermont and everywhere else – who go the extra mile every day to turn their kids into readers.

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We hope you had a good weekend. We sure did! We went to D23, the annual gathering of the world’s Disney fans, in Anaheim, Calif., where are friends at Disney announced that they were donating 8 million new books to First Book. And we will put every single one of those books into the hands of kids in need.

Eight million books is a lot of books. To give you some idea of just how many, if you laid them all end-to-end, you would definitely give up and go home long before you were done. To give you an even better idea, First Book distributed 8 million books altogether last year; Disney’s incredible donation will allow us to double that.

To top it off, Disney also made a donation of $500,000 to First Book, which will help us cover some of the many expenses involved in getting all those books out to schools and programs serving kids from low-income families around the country.

So a big THANK YOU to our friends at Disney, from all of us at First Book, and from all of the kids in all of the 27,000 programs in the First Book network!

Remember, if you work for a school or program that serves children from low-income families, or if you’d like to help your child’s teacher or program leader get new books, sign up with First Book.

First Book was in Milwaukee last week, getting books to kids. We’ve been on the road a lot this summer; we try to spread our massive book distributions across the country so that schools and programs that can’t afford the shipping costs for the free books can still get what they need for the kids that they serve.

We are very happy with our books. We have had to stop getting them if we have to pay for shipping because there is no money in our budget. I have looked for grants to pay for books, but so far in vain. These will last us for a while. Thank you!

Lynn Flynn, PADS Crisis Services, Inc., Chicago

It was as hot in Milwaukee as it has been everywhere, we are sorry to report, but despite the heat we managed to get over 400,000 books distributed, almost a quarter of those to programs in Wisconsin and nearby areas.

As always, we got the chance to meet lots of amazing people:

• the men and woman who work with kids in need every day
• the hard-working volunteers that lug boxes and load station wagons with books
• the partners – like NewThreads of Hope – who loan us the warehouses
• and the publishers – like Disney Publishing Worldwide – who provide the books.

It takes a lot of people to make these book distributions possible, and we are grateful. We’re also grateful to the fine people of Milwaukee for having us. Go Bucks!

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!

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I spend a lot of time here at First Book in Washington D.C. talking with our Recipient Groups about how to receive books, but last week I was able to experience the thrill of providing books to the children that need them most first-hand! Early Sunday morning, I packed up my laptop and left the humid heat of Washington, D.C. for the humid heat of Oklahoma City to distribute 330,000books as part of National Summer Learning Day with the help of our fantastic partners at Disney Publishing Worldwide and Feed the Children!

Upon landing in Oklahoma, Erin Carlstrom from Feed the Children met, Larry, Mitali, Rachael and myself and whisked us off to local Oklahoma City schools to help prepare for reading events which took place on June 21st, National Summer Learning Day.

The next day we had a busy schedule driving throughout Oklahoma City hosting events at three local schools. These events went off without a hitch thanks to help from the Oklahoma City Fire Department, Sheriff’s office, staff from the Lieutenant Governor’s office, Feed the Children, and local Reach out and Read employees.  We spent the day discussing the importance of summer reading, our favorite places to read in the hot summer, our favorite books to read over and over by the pool – and then surprised the kids with books for them to take home and read all summer long!  We even got to host a very special reading event featuring Oklahoma 2010 Book Award winner Tammi Sauer, who read, danced, and sang her book Chicken Dance to a group of elementary school children – all of whom then received a signed copy!

The next few days were spent in the warehouse, where we labeled, sorted, and shipped the rest of the 330,000 books that our partners donated to us. Groups that picked up books were ecstatic and some had driven as far as Colorado and Texas!  The days were long, and hot, with temperatures reaching as high as 110 degrees in the warehouse, but we had high spirits, great help from our volunteers at Pi Beta Phi and the Junior League of Oklahoma, and a great mission – providing books to the kids who need them most to enjoy all summer, and for many summers to come.  The experience went by quickly, and while it was nice to get back into the air conditioned office, the impact we felt we had made in Oklahoma and beyond made the heat worthwhile.

Last Thursday, June 25th, I was lucky enough to join the President, the First Lady, and hundreds of Congressional family members to prepare 15,000 backpacks with books and other items for the children of servicemen and women. With the incredibly generous support of Random House Children’s Books and Disney Publishing Worldwide, First Book was able to donate 30,000 books (two for each backpack!) with a retail value of almost $250,000.

The service event highlighted ‘United We Serve,’ President Obama’s call to all Americans to engage in service projects and create meaningful impact in their towns and communities. The ‘United We Serve’ summer service initiative began June 22nd and runs through the National Day of Service and Remembrance on September 11th. The initiative is being led by the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency dedicated to fostering service in communities across the country.

Curious about the books the President and the First Lady helped us pack?  Here’s the list — full of great choices for your own summer reading!

• Clementine by Sara Pennypacker and illustrated by Marla Frazee
• Magic Tree House #28: High Tide in Hawaii by Mary Pope Osborne
• The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
• The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
• Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud
• Holes by Louis Sachar