By Taylor Dennis
Friends of Greenpoint Library, a local group of organized volunteers who help the neighborhood library through advocacy, fundraising and promotion, hosted their second annual fall book sale on October 19, located at 107 Norman Ave. at Leonard St. Brooklyn, NY.
Days prior to this bustling book sale, the library collected second-hand books from the community from October 6 through October 16. These books, all in new or near-new condition, were collected over ten days, organized, and set up on the second floor of the library.
Starting at noon, locals quickly filed in and began their search for their newest and latest reads. Each table was organized by genre and even included a small children’s area for kids to play, read, and hangout while their parents shopped. Genres included Thriller, Romance, Young-Adult, Children’s, Self-help, How-To, Foreign Language, and Travel, just to name a few.
Within thirty minutes of opening, the room quickly filled up with people from all around Brooklyn and Queens, causing organizers to form a line of people waiting to get in. Lots of shoppers, equipped with their own bags and boxes, shuffled through the hundreds and hundreds of books. Once books began getting bought from the tables, organizers quickly refilled each table with a seemingly never-ending abundance of donated books.
At check-out, shoppers were able to not only purchase their books for one-dollar each, but the chance to enter local raffles or purchase a printed tote bag, made by local Greenpoint Artist, Steve Wasterval, for twenty-dollars. Raffles included gifts from local Greenpoint businesses such as a fifty-dollar gift card to The WonderMart, a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar gift card to Subversive Tattoo, a one month All Access pass to East River Pilates and many more.
Greenpoint Artist, Steve Wasterval, graciously donated these printed totes for free of cost to Friends as a way to help raise money for the community. Those who chose to purchase this unique tote, which showcased a painted print of the library, had the ability to fill up the tote with as many books as possible for a total of twenty-five dollars.
All proceeds made from this book sale go towards funding various library programs.
“We offer programming for all ages, kids, adults, teens, older adults. We’re very interested in supporting our fiber arts programming right now, which has been very successful, and children’s programming as well,” said library employee Abby.
Looking around, event goers struggled to carry their armfuls of books out with them, with almost every person purchasing over twenty books. Children, adults, and teens rummaged through the tables and tables of books.
Volunteers were thrilled to have received so many book donations, with this year’s numbers outdoing last year’s, and to have so many people not only visiting the event but purchasing books.
