International Literacy Day

Pages for people, planet, and prosperity

Several weeks ago, the ThriftBooks team sat down to plan our message for this year’s Literacy Day. The theme, set by UNESCO, is Literacy for People, the Planet, and Prosperity, three P’s that, honestly, could have been written on the walls of our ThriftBooks office and processing centers! We spend our days giving books second lives (planet), getting them into more hands for less (prosperity), and seeing firsthand, how reading changes people’s lives.

Somewhere in our planning we realized the theme was missing a fourth P: Pages. Not books on a shelf but pages turned. So, pulling it all together, we developed a Ripple Manifesto for the day:

The ripple we didn’t plan for

We’d had that manifesto drafted for a while when the news came that we’d lost Dolly Parton. We shared our thoughts last week in a tribute blog so we won’t repeat it here — except for one thing. Her father never learned to read, and she answered that by mailing a book a month to millions of children. If you ever wanted proof that a book is never just one

book, that’s it: one woman’s idea becoming the biggest ripple of reading any of us will ever see. We didn’t build our literacy day program around her. But it would feel wrong not to say that today, we’re reading in her honor.

How our Literacy Day ripple works

Teachers and librarians across the country have built shoppable classroom lists filled with books their students need. When you buy from one of those lists today, three things happen:

1. A classroom fills with stories. The books ship straight to that teacher’s shelves and directly to the kids.

2. You receive a FREE BOOK Reward on us. Every purchase from a shoppable wish list for someone else earns you, the shopper, a FREE BOOK Reward. (Note: you must be a member of our free-to-join ReadingRewards program)

3. We gift one more book. For every book purchased, ThriftBooks donates a separate book to a child or community through our nonprofit partners.

One purchase. Three readers. That’s the whole idea.

Why pages, and why we’re a little obsessed with them

Back in January we launched the 500 Billion Page Challenge, a nationwide push to get America reading 500 billion pages a year again, one page at a time. Every book bought today, gifted today, and read this fall adds pages to that total. Books are how you take part today; pages are what they become once they’re read. Which is why we end the manifesto with the statement: Every page counts. So, join us in celebrating Literacy Day. Shop a list, start a ripple, and then get your pages in.

How to join in (it’s simple):

If you want to support a classroom:

1. Pick a teacher’s list, one shared by an educator you know, or browse today’s featured classroom lists

2. Buy a book (or a few) from a list. It ships directly to the teacher’s classroom.

3. Watch for your FREE BOOK Reward to land in your account, and know a child somewhere just got a free book, too.

If you’re a teacher or librarian and haven’t built a list yet, there’s still time.

· Sign in at ThriftBooks.com

· Click the My List bookmark icon to open your Wish List

· Add the books your students need

· Set your school’s address under List Settings and hit Share List.

Every purchase from your link today counts.

We believe a book is never just one book. Today, let’s prove it.

Read more by Barbara Hagen