The holiday season is rich with charities designed around the spirit of giving, especially for children and teenagers. But giving gifts to strangers is difficult. You can never know if they will like it, and if they do you will never know if you’re actions truly had any positive, lasting effect on their life. A book might be the perfect gift. A book is affordable. Books are catered to the readers’ imagination, and thus can be widely enjoyed. Possibly most important of all, books can truly affect people.

That is why the Stillwater Public Library is partnering with Head Start and Community Thread’s Holiday Hope to run a book drive for this holiday season. The library is collecting new, unwrapped books targeted for children and teens to be distributed around the community and nearby areas. The drive is geared towards youth living in less economically-fortunate homes, where presents, especially books, might be rare for the holidays. It has been well documented that reading at a young age will improve one’s effectiveness in both the classroom and the workplace, and also helps to guide relationships in life.

The book drive is the Stillwater Public Library’s local charity for the Stillwater area. They collect books at a small box situated on the information desk on the lower level of the library for distribution through Head Start and Community Thread’s Holiday Hope program.

“We collect books for families that are registered with Holiday Hope,” library youth services supervisor Angela Petrie said. “It’s kind of nice to get a new book this time of year.”

The drive is a group effort, with each organization doing its distinctive part. Petrie and the library help collect the books and facilitate communications.

“In previous years we have just boxed up the books and [community thread] takes it from there,” Petrie said. “Its just a matter of preparing the press release, setting out and decorating the donation box and doing the publicity for the event. I’m basically a liaison between the organizations because I have the connections within the community.”

After collecting and sorting the books, they go to the Holiday Hope center, the  counterpart of the Community Thread organization during the holiday season.

“Community thread identifies families who have financial need and try to help them out during the holidays. All the books go to families that are registered with Holiday Hope. They identify where the books can best be used, and we haven’t really been involved with that. We’re doing this on their behalf, so we go with whatever they see as being the best use for the books,” Petrie said.

The other partner for this Holiday Book Drive is Head Start. They help fund and publicize the information for the drive, as well as having a group of children ready to receive books for the holiday season.

“It’s basically a preschool that kids have to qualify for if their family can’t pay for preschool or if they’re special needs,” Petrie said. “It’s kind of just a way to give them a head start. It’s an initiative to get them up to speed so that by the time they’re in Kindergarten they have those skills.”

The book drive is just one of many ways that the Stillwater Public Library attempts to improve the community and future of our community through the use of books.

“It just kind of makes sense to have this be part of our landscape here,” Petrie said.