Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer is now accepting donations for a free children\u2019s book fair that her office will host on Jan. 25, in what has become an annual tradition.<\/p>\n
The event will occur between 1 and 4 p.m. at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, which is located at 334 Amsterdam Ave., between West 75 and 76th streets. \u201cWe need to collect those outgrown books,\u201d the Council member noted in an iteration of her newsletter.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting next week, please bring clean, children\u2019s-only book donations (especially Spanish-language titles) to my District Office (563 Columbus); we\u2019ll accept them through 1\/16, and after that at the JCC (Monday, 1\/19\u2013Friday, 1\/23),\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The book fair has become a colorful staple of Brewer\u2019s tenure, and attracts donors come rain or shine.<\/p>\n
The inaugural 2023 iteration\u2014also held at the JCC\u2014pulled in 3,000 titles for eager kiddos, even though \u201cthe rain fell so hard it turned white on the pavement,\u201d as Spirit <\/a>contributor<\/a> Dean Jamieson put it. It was held in partnership with the Church of Latter-Day Saints, the Bank Street School for Children, and a local group dedicated to providing books for asylum-seeking families.<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s event drew in 6,000 books, with leftover books dropped off in local schools.<\/p>\n In a Jan. 5 interview about this year\u2019s fair, Brewer told The Spirit that the event is always \u201ca real joy . . . for both parents, kids, and teachers. I didn\u2019t realize the depths to which these wonderful teachers go, to make sure that there are free books within their classrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n Brewer noted that these educators end up coming to the fair from \u201call over,\u201d not just her Upper West Side district. She\u2019s seen them hauling bags to the event in recent years, in order to load up on as many titles as possible for their young students. \u201cThey build their whole libraries,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have kids running around with 10 books, having chosen them,\u201d Brewer added. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting to see that. . . . It almost makes the whole event worth it. When you go to a bookstore, or you go to a library as a 10-year-old, you can\u2019t take 15 books. You can take, you know, two. \u201d<\/p>\n On the other side of the ledger, Brewer said, is the fact that many of her constituents have \u201cbooks that [their] kids have outgrown.\u201d Donors with adult children have been \u201ccalling us for the last month, because they want to get rid of their books,\u201d she explained with a laugh.<\/p>\n Indeed, her office has run into donors who are so eager to offload their inventory\u2014for a good cause\u2013that staffers have had to explain that books are only being accepted as of Jan. 5, and not \u201clast week or the week before.\u201d Given the sheer volume of books being donated, Brewer said that pre-fair sorting would likely prove to be an intense undertaking.<\/p>\n Brewer reiterated that she was especially looking for Spanish-language titles, and anticipated that families living in shelters or NYCHA housing would greatly benefit from the event.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re a reading community on the Upper West Side,\u201d Brewer concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer is now accepting donations for a free children\u2019s book fair…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,43092,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-90893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-free-children039s-book-fair","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}