Wow! What an incredible past few weeks it’s been. Since I wrote my first post about #KidsNeedBooks, hundreds of books have gotten into kids’ hands thanks to the generosity of over 85 authors, and giveaways are still going on. Check out this great article in School Library Journal about the movement!

We’re excited to keep this going, too. There are still some giveaways being offered (use the hashtag #KidsNeedsBooks to find them). We’re also hoping to to broaden out the program to foster real relationships between authors and under-resourced schools.

To stay in the loop about future giveaways and projects, you can sign up here!

We’re hoping to build a list of all the organizations that currently offer books to schools that need them. If you know about a book donation program, will you add them using this Google Form? (You can see organizations listed so far here.) This way we’ll have a better sense of how to best help, and it’ll be easier for teachers and librarians to know what opportunities are available.

If you have ideas for other ways to get books into kids’ hand, will you share them in the comments? So far on Twitter, we’ve seen some inventive ideas like the book drive that librarian Jill Dodge organized to give the kids who qualify for free-and-reduced the chance to go book shopping during lunch, the school-wide Book Swap that Laura Mossa is organizing, and the school in Canada that collected books from families and donated over 2,000 books to nearby schools that needed books last year. It would be wonderful if we could all share ideas with each other.

I’m so thankful to all the authors who are helping to make this happen…Jarret Lerner, Intisar Khanani, and so many others. And I’m thankful for all of the teachers and librarians who are such champions for their students that online advocating for them!

Let’s all stay connected, and let’s all keep working to help kids have access to good books!