Our friends over at Addy & Ferro in Fort Greene are really getting into the holiday spirit! They will be having a holiday book drive and a special sale now through Thursday, December 20th.
From their website:
Bring in a new unwrapped hard cover children’s book to be given as a holiday gift to children in a Brooklyn shelter. Each donation will yield a coupon of Good Will, and should you decide to make a purchase, you will receive 30% off each item for each book donated. The coupon can be used on all merchandise (full priced and sale) and is to be used at the time of donation, it can’t be saved for a later date.
Giving is the best gift…
Addy & Ferro
672 Fulton St. (between S.Elliot & S.Portland)
Tues – Sat: noon – 8:00 p.m.; Sun: noon – 6:00 p.m.
718.246.2900
P.S.
I was recently talking to a friend of mine, Eleanor Traubman, author of the delightful blog Creative Times. We were having a discussion about the many children’s books we read when we were young. We both had such fond memories of Harry the Dirty Dog and Where the Sidewalk Ends and the many Little Golden Books we owned. Eleanor still has a large collection of children’s books and she even had a Harry the Dirty Dog book that I’d never seen! (It was just like the original Harry the Dirty Dog story, except that this time Harry gets really dirty at the beach and his family doesn’t recognize him because he’s covered in seaweed.) Eleanor and I looked at the pictures in the Harry book and we couldn’t stop laughing! It was so much fun to read, and gave us so much joy (I think I was crying because I was laughing so hard). And we have our parents to thank for that. They gave us lots of books when we were young, and they read to us, and that has created wonderful memories for us that we still have in adulthood. No Sony PSP will ever do that.
I like the folks at Addy & Ferro.
I’m with you on the reading. I’m definitely the person I am today due to a love of reading that was given to me by my parents at a very early age. Video games are fun but I remember “The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland” and “Where the Wild Things Are” in much more vivid detail than I do Space Invaders or Pac Man!
Changeling, have you heard of any Bed-Stuy literacy programs that a person could donate time and/or resources to?
You hit the nail on the head, laduchessa. I had those video games, but luckily they were introduced to me AFTER I learned to read and developed a love of books. While those games were fun, when I think about Centipede or Pac Man or Donkey Kong I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy like I do when I think of Where the Wild Things Are or my Richard Scarry books.
And I’ll look for that literacy program–perhaps the new reading room may have a program. I’m sure there are probably a bunch of places in this neighborhood that already have these types of programs in place.
Awesome! I will investigate literacy programs as well and will post the results for interested parties.
Petra -
I laughed so hard when I read your re-counting of us laughing about Harry the Dirty Dog getting covered by seaweed and being unrecognizable to his family. Funny thing – I was telling Mike about all that last night and then I went ahead and read him that story out loud.
Some of your readers are asking about literacy-based initiatives to give time to. One that I can suggest is Learning Leaders, where you go through a training to help a young person or a classroom in a public NY school with literacy. Check them out on the web.