Ready to escape? Grab a book.
When you hear the word escape, where does your mind go?
A beach with warm, soft sand between your toes and fluffy clouds in the blue sky? Back to a time in school when you were happily walking the halls with friends? A family reunion across town, on the other side of the country or even across an ocean?
Maybe you were traveling a magical countryside in pursuit of saving mankind. Or navigating a romance in 1950’s NYC. Perhaps retracing steps of a missing beloved friend…on Neptune.
When you read books, the possibilities of escape aren’t limited to beaches or memories. They’re entirely endless! The stories we share through books take us far from our personal worlds into the life experiences of others — real or imagined.
Especially recently, we at BookGive have been thinking a lot about how crucial books are to allow us to escape from one reality and enter into another. Yes, we always have to take care of our collective basic needs, but we also need to nurture the other aspects of our lives. Books can help.
Lucas Garcia, co-founder of Compassionate Colorado, a partner we serve, knows that books help us care for the whole self. He shares, “with Compassionate Colorado, we ask ourselves how can we take care of the whole person by considering their mind, body and soul? For us, a large focus right now is on supplying food and water to those who need it, but how do we also address one’s mind and soul?”
Compassionate Colorado will be doing just that when they deliver 6 boxes of children’s books contributed by BookGive (as well as other essential items sourced from other donors) to the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe in South Dakota. Our hope, echoing Garcia’s sentiments, is that having new books will allow the children a moment of escape into fun and new worlds.
As we contemplate the time we’re in right now, having the ability to escape through reading books has arguably never been so important. At BookGive and beyond, we all owe it to ourselves and others to make time to escape through reading books and ensuring everyone has the opportunity and access to do so.
Every box of books delivered to the nonprofits, senior living facilities, homeless shelters, schools, prisons, and food banks we serve provides countless people the chance to escape from all their worries into a new world. But more important to us at BookGive, escaping into another person’s story is the first step into understanding the world through another person’s eyes.
Grab a book. Go somewhere else for a while. We’d love to hear about your escape.
This blog post graciously contributed by BookGive volunteer writer, Colby Leggett. Click here to join our volunteer writing team.
