It was back 3 years ago when I first started a book swap program among my kids’ friends.
The intention was very simple – reuse, recycle, reduce; save money, save space, share interest.
Every time when I try to clear my bookshelf, I feel bad that so many well-conditioned books which have left such wonderful reading memory to me are sadly discarded by my kids (a good problem maybe, since it means Ali & Mei Mei are really obsessed with reading and need more and more books…).
However, just the idea of throwing the books away simply hurts me. Donating them cannot really lessen much my guilty feeling of leaving books to the landfill. For me, all books are such treasure of thoughts from different people. They are living things. They are wisdom. They must be respected (I actually don’t allow my kids leave their books on the floor, or worst, step on them).
3 years ago, I decided to test the water, seeing how this concept could work. Each kids brought along 10-20 books they no longer read, put them together, and took their friends’ books. I gave this book swap program a name “A Book for A Book“, a funny pun of “An Eye for An Eye”, or like its Chinese translation “以牙還牙；倒不如以書還書“！
Not only can kids start to have more intellectual exchanges about books, they also cherish more the books their parents unconditionally bought for them. During the swap, I saw kids ask if they can have their books returned after their friends finish it, or a few of them agreed to take turn to read an interesting book. Of course, no need to mention how much money we parents can save, and how much we help to recycle, reuse and reduce!!
To celebrate the official launch of The Avid Reader Club, this year’s A Book for A Book was the largest ever! With more than 100 friends & guests came to our centre ATEC (One Island South) during the afternoon of Aug20, 2016, we collected a record high of 934 books for exchange! Thank you for joining us!!
For more photos, please visit The Avid Reader Club Facebook Page
theavidreaderclub.com 