Book Wish Foundation - Foundation Business

Top Authors Join Forces To Help Refugees

logan — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:51:00 +0000

What do the authors of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, The Princess Diaries, the mega-bestsellers Goosebumps (350 million+ sold) and The Baby-sitters Club (175 million+ sold), the Newbery medal-winning Dicey's Song and Out of The Dust, and the National Book Award-winning them have in common?

They are among the incredible contributors to our new book, What You Wish For: A Book For Darfur! I am thrilled to share with you the exciting news about the book, and hope you will help us in a very specific way to make it a huge success. Working with the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, we will be using 100% of our proceeds to fund libraries for the 250,000 Darfuris living in refugee camps in eastern Chad.

What You Wish For: A Book For Darfur features stories and poems about wishes by some of the top talent writing for children and young adults: Alexander McCall Smith, Meg Cabot, R.L. Stine, Ann M. Martin, Cynthia Voigt, Karen Hesse, Joyce Carol Oates, Cornelia Funke, Nikki Giovanni, John Green, Nate Powell, Gary Soto, Jeanne DuPrau, Francisco X. Stork, Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sofia Quintero, and Jane Yolen. All have contributed their writing for free to support this cause. Advocate, actress, and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow has written a moving Foreword based on her 13 visits to Darfur and Chad, and we are honored to include a statement by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres.

All that the book is missing right now is you. We will be printing the names of 1,000 supporters in the book, and I hope you will strongly consider being one of them and helping to tell as many people as possible about this opportunity. By

What You Wish For: A Book For Darfur will be released in September by Penguin's imprint G.P. Putnam's Sons. You can already

If you have any questions about the book, or ideas or contacts for publicity, please contact us. Thank you for your continued support. We have been working on this book for two years behind the scenes, and we are so excited to finally share it with you.

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Announcing Our First Refugee Camp Library

logan — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:36:09 +0000

Our most exciting news ever! Click here to read the details of the first refugee camp library funded by our charity anthology, What You Wish For. More than 19,000 Darfuri refugees in eastern Chad will gain access to books targeted to their interests and reading skills!

New Jersey Schools and Libraries Raise Funds for Refugee Camp Library

logan — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 19:57:35 +0000

We are thrilled to announce on World Refugee Day that booklovers across New Jersey have pledged their support for Darfuri refugees' literacy, raising nearly $4,000 towards our work developing libraries in Darfuri refugee camps in Chad! Under a month-long

Thanks also to the staff at these schools and libraries for lending their organizational skills, creativity, and time to the project. Being a teacher or librarian is already more than a full-time job, so we're very grateful for their leadership.

A huge thanks to the New Jersey State Library for pioneering the first statewide fundraiser we know of on behalf of refugee camp libraries! This could not have happened without the critical support of Youth Services Coordinator Sharon Rawlins and the rest of the NJSL team, including Sheri Shafer, Gary Cooper, and the State Librarian, Norma Blake.

Thank you, New Jersey!

If you missed out on the fundraiser, but would like to contribute, pick up our book of short stories for young adults, What You Wish For. The renowned contributing authors all gave their writing pro bono, and we are giving 100% of our proceeds to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, to fund library development in the Darfuri refugee camps in eastern Chad. You can also donate directly.

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Pennsylvania School Librarians Recognize Darfur Anthology "What You Wish For"

logan — Thu, 31 May 2012 21:25:12 +0000

More recognition for What You Wish For! Our Darfur charity anthology is included in the Best Story Collection category of the 2011 Pennsylvania School Librarians Association Young Adult Top Ten or so Fiction Titles! Thank you, Pennsylvania, and congratulations to our fantastic authors!

What You Wish For is available now wherever books are sold, and one online bookseller, Better World Books, will even donate their profits to our refugee camp library project when you

Darfur Book Nominated for Teen Award

logan — Wed, 30 May 2012 06:39:10 +0000

What You Wish For, our collection of short stories and poems raising funds for Darfuri refugee camp libraries, has been nominated for the

What Book Should I Buy An Aspiring Writer?

logan — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:53:45 +0000

What You Wish For is now the perfect holiday gift for aspiring writers ages 13+. Readers have a chance to get their own unpublished manuscripts critiqued by renowned literary agents and authors, in an essay contest we just announced at bookwish.org/contest. A 500-word essay about a short story in What You Wish For is all that separates six winners from getting feedback on their own writing from:

Laura Langlie, literary agent for Meg Cabot
Nancy Gallt, literary agent for Jeanne DuPrau
Brenda Bowen, literary agent and editor of Karen Hesse's Newbery Medal winner Out of the Dust
Ann M. Martin, winner of the Newbery Honor for A Corner of the Universe
Francisco X. Stork, winner of the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award for The Last Summer of the Death Warriors
Cynthia Voigt, winner of the Newbery Medal for Dicey's Song and the Newbery Honor for A Solitary Blue

Essays are due Feb. 1, 2012, so there's plenty of time for gift recipients to enter. Essay contest winners will have six months to submit young adult or middle grade manuscripts for critique, so it's okay if they haven't written them, yet. See bookwish.org/contest for full details about the contest.

What You Wish For is a collection of short stories and poems about wishes from 18 all-star writers: Meg Cabot, Jeanne DuPrau, Cornelia Funke, Nikki Giovanni, John Green, Karen Hesse, Ann M. Martin, Alexander McCall Smith, Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Joyce Carol Oates, Nate Powell, Sofia Quintero, Gary Soto, R.L. Stine, Francisco X. Stork, Cynthia Voigt, Jane Yolen. With a Foreword by Mia Farrow. All contributed their writing for free so that we could donate 100% of our proceeds to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, to develop libraries in Darfuri refugee camps.

What You Wish For received a starred review in the American Library Association's Booklist magazine.

Where to buy:

SAGE Publications Supports Library for Ghana Orphans

logan — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:36:41 +0000

We are thrilled to report that our upcoming project to build a library for AIDS orphans in Ghana has received support from a major international publisher,

We'll be posting lots of photos and details when the project launches, and providing ways for everyone to get involved. Meanwhile, a huge thanks to

Poetry Book Orders Matched with Donations by Publisher

logan — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:08:14 +0000

Avalon Press, a publisher in the UK, is supporting our or Thanks, Avalon Press, for helping us build a library for refugees!

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Donate a Brick to Build a Refugee Camp Library

logan — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:15:56 +0000

For just $2 you can make a tangible and long-lasting difference in the lives of thousands of Darfuri refugees. For $2 you can fund one of the 5,000 bricks we need to build a library in a refugee camp in Chad. Whether you give one brick or one hundred, you will be making a real difference. Please visit our new library builder site to participate. You can leave a message for the public and donate in honor of your favorite author or a special book lover in your life. Tell your friends and, together, we can make it to 5,000 and build a library.

Refugee English Program Continues to Grow

logan — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:59:51 +0000

About 2,000 Darfuris are now enrolled in refugee-organized English classes in three refugee camps in eastern Chad, nearly double the number from a year ago. The classes have grown dramatically, from an initial 400, since we started supporting the refugees with Headway ESL textbooks from Oxford University Press. See video from the classes below and learn about our plans to expand this highly successful program.

In this video from Bredjing and Treguine Refugee Camps, Anne Goddard from our partner CORD shows two of the classroom environments in which both men and women are learning English, their "road to freedom." You can see some of the textbooks we sent, Videos section of our website or on our

Because of the success of this program — indicated by increased enrollment (which is not free, the refugees pay the teachers in their ranks), increased proficiency, and voluntary continuation of classes through the summer school break — we have been asked by our partner CORD to expand support in Gaga Refugee Camp and extend support to a fourth refugee camp, Farchana. We will soon be announcing our goals for these camps, likely around 1,000 textbooks. As in the past, publisher Oxford University Press donates the Headway teachers' books and provides the students' books at cost (85% off), meaning that every dollar Other people want to help us, we are not forgotten."

You can help, too, by