Operation Teen Book Drop Takes Off
By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 4/21/2008
If teens can’t make it to the library, then bring the library to them. That’s the plan behind Operation TBD (Teen Book Drop), a literacy program that provides books to young adults patients in pediatric hospitals across the U.S. and Canada.
Sponsored by readergirlz, the online book community, and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) the program recently donated 10,000 YA novels, audiobooks, and graphic novels to kids who have endured long-term hospital stays. The books, donated by 20 book publishers and valued at more than $175,000, were part of Support Teen Lit Day on April 17.
Author Justina Chen Headley, a cofounder of readergirlz, wanted to find a way to support teen patients going through such a difficult time through a massive book drop. "While touring my local children's hospital to research my novel, Girl Overboard (Little, Brown, 2008), I couldn't help noticing that teen patients didn't seem to have the comfort objects that the little ones did," she says. "As an author, I knew that
YA books—books with exceptional characters and fabulous stories—could provide teen patients with some of the escape and inspiration they needed.”
Operation TBD also aims to encourage teens to read for pleasure and is meant to coincide with YALSA's Support Teen Literature Day, which kicks off Teen Read Week, held this year from October 12-18, with the theme of Books with Bite @ your library.
Participating publishers include Abrams Books, Bloomsbury, Candlewick Press, HarperCollins, Hyperion Books, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, and Random House. Pediatric hospitals from St. Petersburg, FL, to Palo Alto, CA, have agreed to take part.
"Participating children's hospitals are most grateful for the generous donations of books," say Marion Woyvodich, executive director of The Woodmark Group, an organization that represents 24 prominent children's hospitals of North America.
