The Great Library Giveaway

Where the Best Books Are! will donate 300 books to a Denver, Colo., area school library in a giveaway beginning today!

The Great Library Giveaway runs through Mon., Nov. 22, and is open to public elementary schools in 16 local school districts.

With so many schools hit by budget cuts, Where the Best Books Are! hopes this donation will go a little way to help fill shelves and spur more ways to give back to schools.

All of the books in the giveaway were sent to Where the Best Books Are! for review purposes by these great children's publishers:

Abrams, Bloomsbury, Candlewick Press, Charlesbridge, Chronicle, Blue Apple Books, Disney-Hyperion, D.K. Publishing, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin, Imagine!, Kingfisher, Nomad, Peachtree, Penguin, Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Sleeping Bear, Sterling and Tundra.

Among the highlights: Ingrid Law's Scumble, Over the Rainbow illustrated by Eric Puybaret with a 3-song CD by Judy Collins, The Night Before Christmas performed by Peter, Paul and Mary, and illustrated by Puybaret, Tammi Sauer's Mostly Monsterly, J. Patrick Lewis's Kindergarten Cat and Tad Hills's How Rocket Learned to Read.

Anyone can enter a Denver-area school in the giveaway, whether you live in-state or not -- school staff, district administrators, families of students, friends, etc.

However, due to the high cost of shipping the books, only schools in these districts are eligible to win:

Adams County District 12, Adams County 14 School District, Adams County District 50, Aurora Public Schools, Boulder Valley School District, Brighton School District, Cherry Creek School District, Denver Public Schools, Douglas County School District, Englewood Public Schools, Jefferson County Public Schools, Littleton Public Schools, Mapleton District 1, Sheridan Public Schools, St. Vrain School District and Weld County School District.

To vote for your favorite school, go to Where the Best Books Are! anytime before Nov. 23 and enter one of three ways:

(1) Become a follower (or if you're already a follower, just let me know).

(2) Submit a comment under a post.

(3) Do both to enter your school twice.

Be sure to email me the name of your school after you become a follower or when you submit a comment. (Click the email button at the top of the blog.)

The school with the most votes will win the giveaway.

A winner will be announced Tues., Nov. 23. Then Where the Best Books Are! will arrange a time to deliver the books to the winning school.

To help schools keep track of votes, Where the Best Books Are! will update tallies for each school daily on the blog.

A few thoughts about how this giveaway came about:

One of the great joys of reviewing books has been sharing extra books with local schools, food banks and family shelters.

So when I heard about the cut-backs last spring, I decided I wanted to do something fun and unexpected to help fill gaps on library shelves.

In May, I began setting aside books with the idea that in five months I would have enough to fill a few shelves in a library. I've also added books that I've saved for donation from previous years.

My hope is that students at the winning school feel the same joy our three sons do when books arrive for review.

Best of luck to all of your schools!