Tag Archives: charity

Join a different kind of book club

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NSCRC children with Book Aid boxI love giving books as Christmas gifts – there’s always that sense of offering up a whole world for your recipient to discover.

This year, why not go a little further and offer that gift to a young stranger who needs the light of fiction in their life?

BookTrust aims to send 17,000 festive book gifts to children who need them most. Your gift will help send book parcels to food banks to make sure that as well as food on the table, children have presents under the tree. Or it could go to a child in care, spending their first Christmas in an unfamiliar home.

As well as a book — or two! — BookTrust festive book parcels include a beautifully illustrated bookmark and poster plus a heartfelt letter from an author.

BookTrust say: “It’s so much more than a book parcel. It’s joy. It’s wonder. It’s discovering worlds unknown. It’s making sure children feel special this Christmas. It’s magic, when it’s needed most.”

£10 could send a book parcel to a child who is spending their first Christmas in care.

£50 could light up Christmas for five children who are vulnerable or in care.

£100 could send ten book gifts to a community foodbank for children facing a difficult time this Christmas.

If you’re donating on behalf of someone, you will be sent a special Christmas gift certificate you can personalise to let them know.

Find out how to donate here.

Book Aid does amazing work to get books to people who need them, and you can help, Your donation will cover the cost of sending books to classrooms and libraries in the developing world to reach the minds hungry for all those page-bound possibilities, adventures and experiences.

How does it work?

You have the option of signing up for a monthly subscription of £6, £12 or £25, or donating the amount of your choice. You could also give in memory of a loved one or leave a gift in your will, or give in celebration. If you’re a publisher or other member of the book trade, you could even donate books.

Find out how your gift could help by reading the readers’ stories.

Find out how you can help Book Aid change lives for the better.

Poetry review – Of Love and Hope

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Of Love and Hope coverFewer subjects seem to inspire more poetry than the thorny topic of love, so it takes a lot for one book of love poems to jump out from the pile. Of Love and Hope does it rather beautifully though, without shouting for attention, but simply by being spilling over with thoughtful, evocative words.

The fact that this poetry anthology is sold in aid of Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Breast Cancer Care certainly helps. Nothing assuages the guilt of paying out for yet another book (when your shelves are already packed with unread ones) like knowing the proceeds go to a good cause.

Plus you really are likely to read this one. Editor Deborah Gaye has brought together a carefully selected array of poems that twist, flip and sigh their way into your emotions.

The poets who contributed to the anthology are truly top-notch, counting among their number Seamus Heaney, Wendy Cope, Carol Ann Duffy, Victoria Wood, Arthur Smith, Sir Paul McCartney, Roger McGough, Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch and Margaret Atwood. An impressive guest-list! Continue reading →