Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Secret Garden Books - Gives Back This Holiday Weekend


A Couple of Events to be Thankful for This Season
 


EVENT          Ballard Gives Black Friday
DATE            Friday 25 November 2016
 
EVENT          INDIES FIRST / Small Business Saturday
DATE            Saturday 26 November 2016
 
LOCATION:       Secret Garden Bookshop
                         2214 NW Market St.
   Ballard
       
CONTACT:        Suzanne Perry, Events
                         206-789-5006
                         suzanne@secretgardenbooks.com

Ballard Gives Black Friday
We will be closed on Thanksgiving, enjoying the holiday with our families and friends.  And we won't be offering any doorbusters at 6 AM on black Friday either. That’s not really us
We, along with several other Ballard businesses, are celebrating our shops’ biggest day by doing something a little more socially conscious again this year. This'll be our forth year doing it this way, and we're proud to say we've raised a whole lot of books and money for our charity, Page Ahead, because we are in total alignment with their mandate to get new books into the hands of kids that need them the most. In addition to donating a portion of the entire day’s profits, we’ll also deeply discount Page Ahead’s Book Wish List for our customers to buy directly, with the assistance of Page Ahead volunteers on site here, who’ll wrap and deliver them!
 
INDIES FIRST / Small Business Saturday
 
Sherman Alexie isn't coming to our shop this Small Business Saturday. Neither are any other authors. We are thrilled to participate in the American Booksellers Association's official first-Saturday-of-the-shopping-season day. Read all about the national program here. Lena Dunham is this year's official celebrity endorser! We're solely focusing on an event we're proud to be doing for our community: Secret Garden Book Angels for the 3rd Year
 
Through the holiday season, 120 green angels will be displayed around our shop to represent children's names, ages, and their heart's desire in the form of a new book. They've been collected by our friend Michele Bacon, who, for the third year running, has worked in close association with three local schools: Whitman Middle School, Salmon Bay, and BF Day. Michele has spoken to the people in each school who know their kids best - counselors, school/home liaisons, teachers and librarians. Together they've identified the kids least likely to receive a new book for the holidays. Then, the school representative has done a bit of investigative work in order to find out what sort of book each kid would most like if only they could receive one. 
 
Michele transplanted this idea from Anderson’s Bookshop, which she calls “her bookstore when she lived in Illinois” which has a long history doing a similar program. Books are important to her family and she learned about the homeless population at BF Day Elementary in 2014 when she was visiting potential schools for her own children to attend when they moved to Seattle that year. In 2014, 84 kids received gifts, last year, there were 117.
 
To fulfill our goal of 120 this year, we welcome our customers to pick an Angel and choose a book or gift certificate to fulfill the wish. You'll get a discount on the book and we'll wrap it and make sure it gets hand delivered to the proper school before the start of winter recess. Books will be put in backpacks, given to parents, or handed directly to the designated kid.
 
We share Michele Bacon’s belief that people want to do things for people, especially around the holidays. We are proud that this is our little grass-root, homegrown way of doing it, and we are grateful that our community shares the generosity to make it a success.
 
Happy Holidays,


Suzanne Perry
Events / Public Relations

Secret Garden Bookshop
2214 NW Market St.
Seattle, WA  98107
206-789-5006
 

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