Spent time with kids for The Longest Day at your local book store or library? Keep up the good cause by watching out for book giveaways at area public libraries and other events.
Authors and illustrators are busy raising money for charitable organizations, creating new books, or coming out with new titles. Don’t miss their annual book drives, and learn how to stay in the know at your neighborhood library.
10. Recipe: The Grow-Food-For-Souls Cookbook, Will Leitch: This cookbook is the companion project to the PBS show “Let’s Grow”—and another project to raise $1 million for a new culinary school in D.C. featuring sustainable farming.
Charity: First Floor Foundation
11. Severed Bones, Sara De Boer: The author’s art is in this young adult book, and you will likely feel similar—it could well be a “Needful Things” for the 21st century.
Charity: Water in Common
12. Sample That Song, Shaniqua and Conner Phelan: This musical story of friendship based on real events starts with a protagonist who is paired with her favorite song but then ends with a hilarious dance party, complete with scented bubbles and marshmallows.
Charity: Wounded Warrior Project
13. The Girl Who Made Eggs From Her Thighs, Michael Franti: Unlike most fitness books for kids, this children’s picture book was written by a pregnant vegan. You can’t have this one all year, but you could do a crawl through the library for a raffle prize.
Charity: Pet Project Fund
14. Frolic: A Novel by Gail Bowen: What happens when kids eat together, make things out of junk, share art, and raise money for their school? This touching novel by Gail Bowen about courage and friends coming together was a finalist for the Caldecott Medal.
Charity: Books for Progress
15. Babies & Eggs: I’m Mad About That, Sheldon Johnson: It’s not just the cookbook. It’s a celebration of food and plants and community and raises money for various kids’ causes in Virginia.
Charity: Friends of Real Food in Lynchburg, Va.
16. Vegetarian Lola’s Storybook, David Ascher: Updating a traditional Italian doll for modern families, this book represents the child’s point of view, going beyond facts to cover lifestyle and culture as well.
Charity: Good For You Kids’ Foundation
17. Hooked on Nails: A Parody Girl’s Song Book, Arik Anisman: Music moves a mind and a soul and (less frequently) passes through the body to the soul. This book, and the one after it, will make you smile and perhaps break a nail or two while listening.
Charity: Lambda Project
18. Welcome to the Commons, Kat Costa: Back to basics and beyond, this picture book for children is a handbook on how to build trees, dirt paths, and beds of flowers and earth to create habitats for all sorts of critters and plants.
Charity: Sustainable Farm Home
19. DIY Children’s Book Cookbook, Caroline Becker: Using paper and recycled materials, kids will learn to create sweet and sour cakes, muffins, pies, and so much more from simple ingredients.
Charity: Wegmans Inc.
20. If a Tree Falls: A Story of Conscience and Community, Naomi Shihab Nye: Kids may not want to read this book, but they will feel the importance of civil action against injustice, as a symbol of the past and present working on behalf of oppressed people and rising together in solidarity for future generations.
Charity: We Gather Communities to Save Species
This post originally appeared on Great Legacies.