My World Book Night Experience.

I've been meaning to write about my experience being a Giver for World Book Night on Monday, but time has gotten away from me this week. But, I can't let any more time pass without telling you all about it.

I picked up my copies of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak the first day I could. My local Barnes and Noble was a pick-up location, and I was slightly disappointed to see that they only had 6 or 7 Givers total. I'm hoping that next year we can have more in our general area.

When I originally applied to be a Giver, I had planned on e-mailing some of the teachers I have worked with in the last two years to give them copies, but since I have a temporary position, I decided to give out my copies to my students. I also sent a couple of copies off to other teacher friends for their classroom libraries. I also gave our school's librarian three copies of the book (the day after I gave them to her, she came to tell me that the school's copy was returned heavily damaged-so it all worked out!).

I brought the remaining copies in to school and gave a little background about the book to each of my classes. I also showed them my signed copy and talked a little bit about my experience meeting Zusak back in 2007. In a couple classes I had minimal interest, but in others, it seemed as if every kid wanted a copy.

I ended up collecting names, then pulled names at random to give away copies. My only negative feeling about giving them out in school was that I couldn't give every student a copy of a book. But, my students were amazing. A few offered to lend their copies to others when they were finished. It was so sweet of them.

All of them were grateful. There were many "thank yous" and hugging of books to chests. After class, one student came up to me and said, "this is the very first book I've owned. Will you sign it for me?" I was touched, so I did.

The next day, almost all of the students who had gotten a book the day before brought them to class. After their quiz, it was nice to see them reading the book. One student told me that their parent started reading it the night before and had to finish it first. :)

In all, it was a great experience to give my students some books. They were so thankful and so excited about reading something that I loved so much. Again, the only downside to the whole experience was not having enough for everyone. But, I was touched by the generousity of my kids as they shared and talked about the book with their peers.

I will definitely do this whole thing again. There was something just so wonderful about talking books with my kids and seeing their eyes light up.

Who else participated? What book did you pass out?

Or, if you didn't participate, if you could pass out any book, what would it be and why? I'm curious!