Join World Book Night on April 23

Do you want to be part of an awesome million-book giveaway? To volunteer to change a life? You can, as part of World Book Night on April 23, 2012

The deadline to sign up to be a volunteer quickly approaches – February 1 – but give us a moment to explain what this is all about.

World Book Night is a campaign to find light- or non-readers in the Portland community and hand them each a book -- a person-to-person sharing of the joy of reading. It was started in the UK, and it is coming to the US on April 23, 2012 – Shakespeare's birthday, not coincidentally! Below you'll find a video clip showing some scenes from the inaugural World Book Night in the UK last year.

The World Book Night organization is printing hundreds of thousands of special free paperback editions of some of this country's most well-loved books. The organization needs thousands of volunteers to go out on April 23 and distribute these free books across America. You pick the place: hospital or diner, school or ... well, lots of possibilities. Be creative. If you are selected to be a book giver, you will give away twenty copies of a single book on that day.

Sign up by February 1 to be a book giver on World Book Night! Please go the website to read more about the mission, some rules and regulations, and the books you can choose from to give away (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Little Bee, The Things They Carried, Just Kids, Kindred, The Book Thief, and a little book you might have heard of called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks are just a few of the titles). All you need to become a giver is a little time, a love of books, and the desire to give something to your community.

Think about where you’d like to give away the books before you go online to apply. And thank you! We love this idea and hope to be your community center for World Book Night support. If enough people sign up and choose Broadway Books as their pick-up spot for books, we're thinking we'll host a little pick-up party the week before World Book Night. World Book Night overlaps with the award ceremony for this year's Oregon Book Awards, so if you're attending that you can give away your books in the afternoon.

But don't delay -- February 1 is just around the corner. Come be a part of this fabulous moment in time to share the love of reading.