So Many Books...

Each year I'm one of many helpers setting out the wares at Ann Arbor's AAUW Used Book Sale, in a vast roomful of tables at Washtenaw Community College. Carton after carton comes out, and we have to practically wedge the books into place, held in by a bookend here, a cut-down cartonful there--well-thumbed paperbacks, pristine hardcovers, specially-priced rare volumes, and books that are not rare at all. Volunteers have been working all summer to sort the thousands of donations. I usually work on the children's-book table, as I did today.

The sight of so many titles, now divorced from their owners, makes me a little melancholy. Not every book stays beloved. And with all these titles clamoring for attention, why try to publish one more? But I believe in recycling, and here's a way to get books into new hands, raising scholarship money on the way. One year, the organizers let me fill a grocery bag with gently-used books to send to SCBWI's efforts for kids who had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Besides, I keep finding things I want, like Janet Schulman's 20th Century Children's Book Treasury. Travel books. A classic story in Spanish translation that I could imagine my character Elena reading. I bought a book of cut-out animal masks one year on impulse, and later used it to play a raccoon in a Raccoon Tune skit.

If that odd title calls out to you, reach for it. You could be its new soulmate.