Did you know Saturday December 6 is Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day?
Established in 2010 by Random House / Ballantine's Mystery/Thriller author Jenny Milchman the first Saturday in December as Take Your Child To a Bookstore Day!
Read more about it in Jenny's Guest Post below!
Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day
A.K.A
How
to Build Literacy, Support Community, & Make Magic Happen
All
in One Day
My kids probably didn’t realize it was as
much of a treat for me as for them. Which started me thinking—were other
parents in on this secret? How many children knew the pleasure of spending time
in a bookstore?
I frequent the mystery listserv, DorothyL,
and a more avid group of readers you couldn’t hope to find. When I floated the
idea for Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, bloggers on the listserv spread
the word. My husband designed a poster, a website, and bookmarks, and we
designated the first Saturday in December as Take Your Child to a Bookstore
Day. This would coincide with holiday gift giving, hopefully giving people the
idea that books make great presents. Just two weeks later, 80 bookstores were
celebrating.
That summer my husband and I loaded the
kids into the car and drove cross-country, visiting more than fifty bookstores.
(You can tell he’s a supportive guy). In 2011, the second annual Take Your
Child to a Bookstore Day found over 350 bookstores celebrating in all 50
states. Some planned special celebrations—children’s book authors, puppet
makers, singers, even a baker who led kids in a gingerbread cookie decorating
activity—while others simply hung a poster in the window. When 2013 came
around, and the number had risen to over 600 independent bookstores, and one
major chain, we knew that word was getting out. Kids + bookstores = magic.
And maybe something even more than that.
There’s a cultural wave behind Take Your
Child to a Bookstore Day. The word locavore isn’t just for a Dr. Seuss
story anymore. Supporting your local community and the resurgence of Main
Street are goals that more and more people recognize as important to build
strong citizens as well as strong readers.
You know that old ad campaign, “Orange
juice isn’t just for breakfast anymore”? I hear that now as, “Bookstores aren’t
just for reading anymore.”
And by that I mean more than the fact that
you can also buy toys, cards, gifts, or have your butterscotch latte at a
bookstore. Bookstores are places where people come together over ideas and
engage in a cultural conversation. That concept is so important I have to say
it again. They are places where people come together. And booksellers
are a group who know how to zig while others are zagging, so impassioned are
they by their life’s pursuit. Their stores are places of physical interaction
in an increasingly virtual world.
When you take a child to a bookstore, you
stimulate his mind and all five senses. (If taste seems a stretch, just let her
have the whipped cream on your latte). There’s a tactile dimension to the
experience that seems rare these days. You also make that child a crucial part
of the place where he lives, supporting it and helping it grow.
Best of all, these things happen in a guise
that to the child is sheer magic. On the shelves of a bookstore sit gateways
into whole new worlds. Children go into bookstores—but they come back out
having journeyed somewhere else entirely.
This Saturday, December 6, 2014 is the
fifth annual Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day. Whether you take your own
child, a child you know, or the child inside yourself to a bookstore, together
let’s build literacy, support community, and make magic happen.
Jenny Milchman is a suspense novelist and
mom from the Hudson River Valley who once drove past Disney with her children
en route to the nearest bookstore.
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