Read All About It!

This week, Open Books got to write with some super fifth graders from OA Thorp Scholastic Academy. We decided that there’s no better way to celebrate Halloween than by using our five senses to write some spooky, scary Halloween poetry! To sweeten the deal, we divided the class up into teams and had ourselves an old-school competition. Which one’s your favorite?

Halloween is a freaky amusement park and nightmare carnival.
It tastes like sweet, brown, green sugar.
It smells like a zombie’s horrible, bad, nasty garbage-truck breath.
It sounds like bats’ eerie screaming, laughing screeching….BOO!
It looks like a pitch-black, haunted house with psycho, hyper kids.
It feels like creepy crawly spiders crawling up your spine.
-Team Bob

Halloween is a scary celebration.
It tastes like sour candy.
It sounds like zombies walking.
It smells like new plastic costumes.
It looks like bloody organs.
It feels like pumpkins full of blood.
-Team Zombies

Halloween is a scary chill in the brightness of a full moon.
It tastes like candy in a basket.
It sounds like the spooky laughter of a cemetery at midnight.
It looks like a dark adventure.
Halloween feels like a mist blowing in your head and chills going down your spine.

Halloween is fun and scary; gory and hairy.
It tastes like crazy candy. That you deserve.
It sounds like shivery.
It smells like BLOOD.
It looks like ghosts rising from the grave.
Halloween makes you feel like you must get ready for your doom.
-Team Vampires

Hi, Blogosphere! Today, we received an e-mail from Koko, one of our fantastic Buddies at Oakton Elementary in Evanston. It was so awesome that we had to share it with you. Sometimes, when we are knee deep in administrative nightmares, it helps for us to be reminded why we do what we do. Thanks, Koko, and thanks to the rest of you who give so generously of your time every week!

Koko writes:

Just some moments from volunteering I wanted to share today. Oakton is (as always) awesome & I love our classroom, teacher, other volunteers & students!! Go, Open Books!!

Week 2 of volunteering … favorite small child asks, “is the world really going to be destroyed like in the movie 2012? That scared me.” End of volunteering, same small child, screaming & pumping his fist as another volunteer hands out Halloween candy, “whoo hoo, we get to eat candy at school, we’re breaking rules!” Yep. You make this planet a place worth saving, kiddo.

Do you remember that feeling you got and still get to this day of picking up a book and finding a special little memento left from the book’s previous owner? Books really do have the most intimate relationships with their owners and it always makes me happy when I find a little piece of the person who read the book before me. When you think about all the emotions that are carried with books and brought into the reading experience it makes finding a picture or note left in a book all the more special. Books are a person’s best friend. They are great therapists, travel partners, study partners, you name it they have done it and been there for their reader. If only books could really talk- I wonder what they would say?

Here at Open Books, we sort through thousands of books everyday and that means we are bound to find some special treasures left within the books. These little pieces build a connection with the people who make what we do everyday a reality. Without our amazing book donors, we would not have a new bookstore or literacy classrooms to help the people we do, and so these little finds are a nice reminder everyday of the power of used books and the power of giving.

I ventured down to the cataloging room where Aaron, our current book intern, showed me just what it is that he comes across on a daily basis. As Aaron and Dustin, our Book Director, sort through all the books, they pull out all of the things they find and stick them on the wall. This wall grows everyday with new fun, quirky, sentimental, sweet, scary and interesting things that are left in these books. We have found airplane tickets, cards, pictures, newspaper articles, poetry, maps, ticket stubs, bookmarks, letters…you name it and we have pretty much found it. Aaron said the most common thing they find in the books are bookmarks . My personal favorite was a bookmark with a quote by a man named Dr. Norman Vincent Peale who wrote the Power of Positive Thinking (great book by the way) “Joy increases as you give it and diminishes as you try to keep it for yourself”. I felt that pretty much summed up our mission at Open Books and the power of giving. These books create joy for so many people on so many different levels and the only way we keep creating joy is by giving it and that is why the power of used books is endless. Their stories are endless, their tales are endless and their readers are endless, especially when it is given from one person to the next.

Our favorite find was a book we came across that had a hand-written note left on one of the first few pages. The book is entitled “A Surgeons Life” with a date marked in the corner as December 23, 1940. The book was given as a gift and this is what it says: “May you find this book- A Surgeons Life, which is an autobiography of the great surgeon J.M. Finney, interesting and educational from cover to cover. We wish you a long life, the best health and happiness for many, many years to come, and may you continue to be a blessing to mankind in the future as you have been in the past. This war torn war needs people like you today and that is why we are wishing you a long life”- Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Guzzie

Doesn’t that just pull a your heart strings? I love to try and think back to the relevance of when it was written and what exactly was going on. World War II would have just started and that would have been almost a year after Pearl Harbor. Books carry all sorts of memories and we love that we can come across some of them.

I created a Facebook album of all that we find! Check it out here! There is some great stuff!

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=46781067724

OpenBooks was lucky enough to have been a part of Yelp’s Causes for a Party event on October 15th. It was a wonderful night meeting new friends and connecting with other non-profits within the Chicago area. We promoted the launch of our new bookstore and met a lot of people who were interested in learning more about our organization! We also asked our visitors to fill out blank Open Books templates that said “Reading is……” and “Books are….” and then hung them up on a board for everyone to see. We received some great answers- here are a few of our favorites!

“Reading is…..A doorway to so many worlds!!”
“Books are……A Magical adventure at your fingertips”
“Reading is…..Great on a Cold Night”

It was a great night for Open Books and we want to personally thank Yelp for all of their support! Check out pictures on our Facebook page here!

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=46781067724

Yelp also did a re-cap of the event with a blog and pictures. Check it out here and see if you can spot a certain OpenBooks shirt within those pictures!

http://communityblog.yelp.com/2009/10/yelpcommunity-causes-for-a-party-in-chicago.html

This month’s 10 questions are answered by our new Bookstore Manager Kevin Elliot! Kevin will be in charge of running our fabulous new bookstore and overseeing the loads of books that come in. Read on and see what Kevin would ask Barack Obama and what his highest paying job to date has been.

If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Carrots… simply because I would like to see if the rumor is true that if one eats enough carrots, they turn orange.

Have you ever met (or even seen) anyone famous randomly in public? Who?

Once I literally and physically ran into John Cusack on Michigan avenue, sending a package he was carrying careening to the ground.  A part of me thinks that this encounter was the inspiration for some of the scenes from his mid-career romantic comedies.  Please don’t blame me, though!

What is your biggest pet peeve?

When someone tells me that they are going to do something and fail to do so.  I’m a pretty patient guy, but it’s hard for me to tolerate unfulfilled promises.

Do you prefer Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, and why?

Dunkin Donuts, hands down…  Starbucks over-roasts their beans and I have heard that they inject their beans with extra caffeine to make up for the lost punch.  I can’t stand insecure coffee!

What was your first job ever?

I had quite the yard work business while growing up.  Everyone on the block knew to call me for their yard maintenance needs.  I also count it as my highest paying job as I once was paid $70.00 for a half hour of work.  That’s $140.00/hr!!!  I would have loved to have seen a check with overtime!

If you could instantly be good at any given thing, what talent would you choose to have?

I would love to be able to dance well, as it would have saved me many many embarrassing dates.  Remind me to tell you about my date at the Cuban restaurant with a live band some time.

If you were a pattern, what pattern would you be?

An irregular tessellation, like an M.C. Escher piece.  One that doesn’t repeat too often, yet still has some sort of cohesive structure.

Who is your favorite character from a fiction or non-fiction book?

Behemoth from Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.  I mean, come on… A talking cat who likes to play chess, drink Vodka, and has a penchant for pistols?  What’s not to like?

If I had to pick a human character, though, it would most likely be Prince Myshkin from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.

If you could ask our president one question, what would you ask him?

Why did you serve such boring beer at your beer summit?  I mean, did I really need to see “Bud Light” in my “Breaking News” feed?  I’m from Milwaukee…Where’s the Sprecher?

Are you a dog person or a cat person?

If you can’t already tell from my photograph, it means you’ve had a bit too much catnip.