Macmillan Children’s Partners With Indies for Crenshaw Nationwide Food Drive

Independent bookstores are teaming up with Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group on a nationwide food drive to address childhood hunger in their local communities. The campaign is part of a promotion for the middle-grade novel Crenshaw (Feiwel & Friends, September 22) by Newbery Medalist and Animorphs series creator Katherine Applegate.

Though the campaign’s official launch is October 1, enthusiastic booksellers are already working with their local food pantries to collect nonperishable food items for children in need. For every store that signs up to participate in the food drive at CrenshawTheBook.com by October 15, Macmillan will donate $100 to No Kid Hungry, an organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger (with donations capped at $7,500). According to No Kid Hungry, 16 million children in the U.S. are struggling with hunger, while three out of four teachers say they have students who regularly come to class hungry. 

“It’s rare that we get to see the immediate impact book campaigns can have in communities,” said Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group Senior Publicist Mary Van Akin. “Booksellers are so well-versed in using books to start conversations, and we’re happy to provide them with the tools to turn the conversation surrounding Crenshaw into action.”

Bookstores that sign up for the campaign will receive a physical event kit including five stickers for donation boxes, 50 “I Donated” stickers, 25 signed Crenshaw bookplates, and one finished copy of Crenshaw to use for display before the book goes on sale. Booksellers are also invited to download Macmillan’s digital tool kit, which contains banners for bookstore websites, an e-mail signature, and shareable images for social media to help promote the drive using the hashtag #CrenshawFoodDrive.

Participating stores will also be entered into the Crenshaw Food Drive Contest. The store that collects the most food between October 1 and October 31, 2015, will win a visit from Applegate, and the contest’s three runners-up will host Skype sessions with the author.

Applegate expressed gratitude to the team at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for organizing the food drive, especially the practical aspects of connecting with indie booksellers.

“Bookstores are the home base for what’s going on in a neighborhood, so it seemed like a natural place to gather canned foods for local food pantries,” she said.

Crenshaw is about a young boy, Jackson, whose loving, hardworking family struggles to make ends meet. As the threat of homelessness looms closer and closer, Jackson’s imaginary friend Crenshaw, a giant cat, reappears in his life. The title has already received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and The Horn Book. An exclusive book trailer for Crenshaw is currently available on the Entertainment Weekly website.

To date, at least 75 indie bookstores have signed up to participate in the campaign, including Vermont’s Phoenix Books, which has stores in Burlington and Essex and a third location set to open in Rutland later this month.

Phoenix Books owner Mike DeSanto said that in 2014, Phoenix collected food and raised money for two local food pantries “as part of a company philosophy that children cannot learn on empty stomachs. So this partnership with Macmillan — promoting Crenshaw and collecting food — was a simple choice for us.”

The Phoenix family of stores will continue to support local efforts to make sure their neighbors have enough food on their tables, DeSanto said, adding that “no Internet company can equal the impact of a locally owned independent store on the communities we serve.”

To launch the Crenshaw campaign in Lexington, Kentucky, Natalie Cunningham, the community engagement coordinator at The Morris Book Shop, said she has reached out to local schools to participate and has already received positive responses from libraries and The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

The Morris Book Shop plans to partner with the E7 Kids Café afterschool program in Lexington on their Pantry Packing initiative, which provides staple groceries to 30 families at the end of each month, when finances may be stretched thin.

Sue Roegge, owner of another participating store, Chapter 2 Books in Hudson, Wisconsin, said she appreciates that Macmillan has made it so easy to plug in to a professionally executed, effective, national campaign that addresses an important issue in booksellers’ own communities.

“[Participating was], honestly, a no-brainer for me,” she said. “I really appreciate Katherine Applegate and Macmillan doing all the groundwork and creating this campaign for us to hitch on to.”

So far, Roegge said, several teachers stopping by the store have said they would love to get their whole schools involved. The campaign has become a helpful vehicle for Chapter 2 to connect with area teachers at the start of the school year and get store/school partnerships and connections going right off the bat, Roegge added. According to the contest rules, food donations collected at schools and libraries during the month of October will also count toward the bookstore’s final total.

Booksellers interested in participating in the Crenshaw food drive can sign up here. To enter to win a visit or Skype session with Katherine Applegate, booksellers must register by October 15. Official contest rules are posted here.