Lest we forget, the "we" being people who grew up around books and reading them, there are in every city groups that run book sales to raise money to help those who never learned to read, or read all that well.
One is the Greenville Literacy Association in Greenville, S.C., and it calls its annual event the Really Good, Really Big, Really Cheap Book Sale.
And to gather up the books it sells it resorts to some of the most imaginative alternative media around. Clearly, the intent is to ensure that wherever Greenvillians turn they are reminded to clear out their old books and drop them off.
Walking up the stairs of at a local parking garage they see that the steps have been turned into books on their side in a neat stack, such classics as J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.”
Shopping at the local Whole Foods, wandering the aisles, they find stacked among the cereals a half-dozen books.
Sitting down for lunch at the local diner, they see, stacked by the salt and pepper shakers, a set of miniature books, tiny books that are in fact packs of Post-It Notes that have been wrapped with specially made book jackets.
“Most of the ideas came from exploring the environment,” says John McDermott, president and creative director of bounce, the agency that cooked up the campaign for the literacy group.
“It was the concept of people having books laying around, so it became where can we find people and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got books lying around, why not bring them to us?’”
The campaign ran last summer, and the agency is now working on a new campaign for this year’s Book Sale.
