Request for Proposals: Shelf Help 2019
Boston Book Festival is once again reaching out to the Greater Boston community to help us implement our annual Shelf Help partnership, which this year is expanding to reach two schools–one serving grades K–8 and one serving grades 9–12. We know that many area schools lack the resources to fully stock their school libraries with contemporary, high-quality books. We want to help expand the library book collections at two local schools, and then we will work with the Wondermore organization to coordinate a children’s or YA author or illustrator visit to share the wonders of book creation with young readers!
Last year, as part of the Shelf Help partnership, the Boston Book Festival, Boys Town Press, Capstone Publishing, and Random House Children’s Books donated books to the King K-8 School in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. The BBF and Wondermore also coordinated a school visit by award-winning author Meg Medina.
In 2019, Shelf Help will partner with not one but two school libraries! We will choose one K–8 school library and one 9–12 school library, providing a donation of new books near the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year. We will be collecting donations at the eleventh annual Boston Book Festival on October 19-20.
If you know a library professional at a school that needs some Shelf Help, please forward them this RFP, which has links to a short online or downloadable application. All proposals are due by May 31, 2019.
You can also lend direct “Shelf Help” to the Boston community! If you would like to donate a book, please come to the Boston Book Festival on October 19 (in Copley) or October 20 (in Roxbury) and look out for our information booth, or you can donate through our online book wish list. Email us at info@bostonbookfest.org to receive a link to the “Shelf Help” donation site. If you would prefer to make a cash donation, please visit our donate page. Upon checking out, select “Make this a gift” and designate “Shelf Help” as the gift recipient in the appropriate box.
With “Shelf Help,” we aim to support students’ discovery and expression of their voices through access to an increased selection of books within their school environment. Words have power to motivate and provoke all readers to discover themselves and their place in the world, and we hope that Shelf Help will encourage students to view themselves as literary explorers!
