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Arts & Entertainment

LA Times Festival of Books: Making a Push for Donating Books

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While we're not usually ones to overly promote Target, we were thrilled to see an area at this year's LA Times Festival of Books that is dedicated to book donation. The target truck was front and center, the signage was out and the opens bins stood ready to receive donations.

Festival-goers were encouraged to bring their new or gently used books to the donation station so the books could be delivered to schools in need.

The number of donated books was added to the total throughout the day. No word yet on how many books in total have been donated, but by late afternoon on Saturday, there weren't a ton of folks lining up to give away their books and we wonder how many people knew about it in advance (so they could bring their books) and if they did know, how many were willing to lug them around the festival until they found the drop-off location.

A cool prompt card was at each table, asking kids to provide more information about each book they were donating so that insight could be passed on to the book's new recipient. While we were there, a father and son spent some time filling out this profile for each book they donated and it was fun to see someone so young get so excited about the books they were giving away. He wanted to be sure that he included all the details he loved about each book, but was careful not to give any major plot points away.

It will be interesting to see how many total donations come in by the end of the festival today -- and maybe next year more folks will know so donations will be way up. If you haven't been to the festival yet and are heading out today...bring your books to donate!

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