This is a love letter to Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help by Better World Books employee, Erin Levin.

As a book company that funds and promotes literacy and education at home and all over the world, we love many authors and books. Recently, however, I have been particularly inspired by a series of love letters our fans have written to us, Better World Books, on their blogs. In this spirit, I felt led to write a love letter to one of my favorite authors.
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*Note* The below blog post is a guest blog from our Twitter friend Heather. This content does not necessarily reflect the views of Better World Books (as our lawyers make sure we say). We love having guest bloggers and invite you to email 11@betterworldbooks.com if you are interested in covering a book or topic on the BWB Blog. Thank you, Heather!
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The man that gets credit for the quote “I cannot live without books,” is none other than the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Many of us would say that we cannot live without books. We are a community of book lovers.
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Post by Erin Gerber, Better World Books Partner ServicesI grew up in a house where I was never told we couldn’t read a particular book, which made my conversation with my fourth grade school librarian all the more confusing.  I desperately wanted to read the latest Judy Blume book, Blubber, for a book report, but was told I’d need to choose another title.  The school library, she explained, did not have a copy of the book because it contained inappropriate language and was not, therefore, a good choice for my project.  Every year, when Banned Books Week kicks off, I’m reminded of this story.

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There is a Spanish proverb which says “the belly rules the mind.” Since we at Better World Books are committed to engaging and enhancing the mind of every person through literacy and education, we thought it necessary to ask our online community to share their favorite cookbooks with us.Here are the most “liked” cookbooks right from the mindful bellys of readers like you.

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A young woman from Tampa, Florida met with financial investors about her tourism school in Kigali, Rwanda.A budding financier from Atlanta, Georgia engaged crowds of young social entrepreneurs from New Orleans, Brazil, and India.

A business woman from Zambia shared the story of her bike shop to a Japanese volunteer.

A successful engineer from Arizona spotted his invention, a water-filtration bottle sold inexpensively in the developing world, on the page of a book at our table.

This all just took place at the Better World Books SOCAP11 Bookstore.

Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) explains that “a new form of capitalism is arising that recognizes our ability to direct the power and efficiency of market systems toward social impact, leading to a more balanced set of ‘returns’.”

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2 college student book drive winners.
5 Better World Books staff.
1 Worldfund development worker.
100s of changed lives.
1000s of Chilean and Peruvian children learning to read.

Here is the story of our literacy trip to Chile and Peru, to see first hand the amazing work being done by our partner, Worldfund. Next year, if your campus book drive is the most successful, this could be you!

Interested in running a campus book drive? Click here. Held a successful campus book drive? Tell us about it!

This “Top 10 Tuesday” we asked our Facebook and Twitter fans to share their favorite genre and an example of a most-loved book within it.Fantasy and historical fiction were by far the favorites.

Here are a few book suggestions our friends and fans offered in each genre. Feel free to add reviews, thoughts and additions in the comments section below…

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*Note* The below blog post is a guest blog from our friends at dosomething.org. This content does not necessarily reflect the views of Better World Books (as our lawyers make sure we say).

Do Something! rallies teens all over the country around a particular causes to help raise awareness and often helps fund the effort they are supporting. We had the great fortune of working with them on the EPIC Book Drive.

We love having guest bloggers and invite you to email 11@betterworldbooks.com if you are interested in covering a book or topic on the BWB Blog. Thank you, Do Something! We love what you and your amazing team are doing.

“Do Something! A Handbook for Young Activists” is an interactive workbook for young people ages 9 and up created by DoSomething.org, the leading not-for-profit for young people. The workbook takes you step-by-step through the process of finding a cause you care about and figuring out how to execute a project in your community.

You start by taking a quiz at the beginning of the first chapter to find your “thing,” and based on those results, you are led to different sections of the book throughout the five chapters. All chapters have a recap section at the end to clearly state what you discovered in each one to further get closer to the end goal of figuring out how to create a project in your community about your thing. According to The Jonas Brothers, “this book gives kids all the tools they need to change the world!”

The workbook can be purchased here. Better World Books and Do Something partnered together in the Epic Book Drive, a campaign to collect books for the recovering school district of New Orleans. Check back to the blog soon for more details on the success of the Epic Book Drive!