She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain

Dear First Book,

Thank you for giving us the books. We really like them. You guys have the best books ever because my little sister loves these books.

I like the ‘Nancy Drew Goes to Hollywood’ one. Your books are really fun to read and they’re funny. I also like ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain’.

How many books do you give out every year? Is it over 100 or lesser? It would have to be over 100 because you have to probably send books to every school right?

Have you guys ever had any other books? Have you ever been to Hawaii?

Sincerely,
Kiley

Dear Kiley,

Thanks for your letter! We get lots of thank you letters here at First Book. We read every single one of them, but we don’t often get the chance to write back. But we liked yours extra, because you asked so many excellent questions.

First of all, good job reading to your little sister. Keep it up!

We distribute a lot of books every year. Way more than one hundred, as you guessed. Last year we distributed almost NINE MILLION new books to kids like you, all over the country. And this year we’re going to do even more.

Your teacher obviously cares a lot about you and her other students, so she signed up with First Book. We want to make sure every kid out there has new books of his or her own. So if you ever meet anyone who works with kids from low-income neighborhoods, tell them to sign up with First Book, and we can help them get the books they need.

As for other books, we have LOTS of books. We have over 2,000 books on the First Book Marketplace, a website where we provide books at affordable prices. (Including lots of Nancy Drew books; they’re some of our favorites too.)

We also have another program, called the National Book Bank, where our friends at publishing companies give us lots of other new books so that we can give them away to smart kids like you.

As for Hawaii, we have been! That’s one of the many places we go to give out books; we were there a couple years ago. We would love to come back, though, because Hawaii is AWESOME. If we come back, maybe we’ll see you.

Thanks for writing to us, and keep reading!

Sincerely,
Your friends at First Book

PS – We liked your picture of the lady on the horse going up the mountain.