By Dylana Milobar

Thousands of books donated through 10th annual Heap the Honda

Feb 6, 2019 | 3:45 PM

KAMLOOPS — For a decade now, helping kids develop a love of reading has been the goal of the Heap the Honda children’s book drive in Kamloops.

The book drive is one of many Literacy in Kamloops (LinK) events that took place in January to promote literacy, with Unplug and Play Family Literacy week finishing off the month.

All this week, volunteers will be sorting thousands of books to be distributed throughout the city.

LinK’s Literacy Outreach Coordinator, Fiona Clare says every January for the last 10 years, the Heap the Honda Drive has collected about 10,000 books, which will be offered at 25 different community bookshelves.

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“One reason we did it was we wanted to increase book ownership as well. Because some families don’t have a lot of books at home, and we know every child should have their own personal library of books,” she explains. “So you can bring them back, if you want you can bring books from home and donate them to the program.”

One of the other goals of the program is to get kids to develop their own interest in reading, by letting them choose what books they want to take home.

Clare says they cater to children aged 0 to 14 years old, covering a variety of book categories.

“A lot of demand for the early books. The little board books, and you know, parents reading stories to their kids. But yeah, we’ve got a bit of everything.”

Al Bailey, a retired School District 73 Librarian, has been helping coordinate the program for the last seven years with his wife, Faith, and has been able to see how the books impact the community.

“People will be filling those bookshelves, and the public will come up to them and say, ‘Are you the guys behind this program? I think its just brilliant. I don’t have to worry about taking books back to the library, and my kid is reading.’ “

Volunteers not only sort through and categorize thousands of books but go the extra mile to make sure the product looks spic and span.

“And they’re all cleaned with baby wipes,” Bailey explains. “And they’re all stickered with a little sticker that says the child can, if he likes the book or she likes the book, they can keep it, or bring it back.”

The bright red bookshelves can be found at the following locations:

To finish off January’s reading theme, the group also held Unplug and Play Family Literacy Week, which offered free, screen-less activities to help families learn to be a little less dependent on technology.

“Sometimes, initally, you might get that response of, ‘What, are you guys digital dinosaurs? Technology is part of our lives, we need it, it’s good, its here’,” Clare says. “But I think people are finding that it’s great when you’re in control of your technology, but when technology starts controlling your life — all the little beeps, you can’t ignore them, and you’re just constantly being distracted, I think people are actually starting to push back against that a bit, and are realizing that we need to be mindful about this.”

“We need to be more present, in the moment, we need to have more face to face time. Because the screen doesn’t replace that.”

Along with the 9,000 students taking part in Unplug and Play Week, to date, there have been over 100,000 children’s books given away since Heap the Honda began.