Buy new books for our local schools

Back of Beyond’s annual “Books for Tots” fundraiser runs through Dec. 31

For over 20 years, Back of Beyond Books has annually run a book donation event called “Books for Tots.” This year, 12 institutions in Moab that work with kids each picked out 30 books in Back of Beyond; people can buy those books, until December 31, to donate directly back to the institutions.

“There’s a handful of things around town that the community seems to really like to do, and this is one of them,” said Shari Zollinger, who runs events and community outreach for Back of Beyond.

The 12 institutions this year are Early Intervention, Grand Preschool, Helen M. Knight Elementary, Moab Charter School, Margaret L. Hopkin Middle School, Grand County High School, Youth Garden Project, BEACON After School Program, Moab Valley Multicultural Center, Canyonlands Field Institute, Heron School, and the Student Career and Success Center. The Heron School and SCSC are new participants this year; Zollinger said each place picked very different books.

“This program is a really good opportunity for them as each organization is building their own library,” Zollinger said. Many use the program as a way to round out their libraries with classics, like Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree” or “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Maud Montgomery. But they also pick books popular with students—many of the books are young adult and middle school reader graphic novels, Zollinger said.

For the high school, librarian Carol Stephenson picked a number of adult science books, like Neil Degrasse Tyson’s “Cosmic Queries: StarTalk’s Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going,” Walter Issacson’s “The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race,” and Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.”

“It’s really cool to see every year [what they pick out]: seeing if the institution’s collection needs something in particular,” Zollinger said. Since this was the first year the Heron School participated, Zollinger said, they did “an excellent job” picking books to round out their library.

Each institution chooses 30 books, and Zollinger said by the end of the fundraiser, every book for every institution is purchased. Once the books are bought, people can still make donations to institutions; Back of Beyond uses those extra donations to give more books or gift cards.