A pumpkin spice latte. The footlong sub of commercial-jingle fame. A gallon (or so) of gas. But your five dollars may best be put to use this weekend at the Urbana-Champaign Books to Prisoners Benefit Book Sale. Proceeds will help Books to Prisoners do what it does best: provide free reading material to incarcerated people in state and federal institutions across Illinois.
Stalwart six-year volunteer Carol Emmerling says five dollars are sufficient funds to ship a box of books to an eager recipient. “We’re talking about people, young and old, who are confined to very small cells. … In a situation like that, especially in a maximum security facility, books are really important,” she said. Run almost entirely by volunteers like Emmerling, Books to Prisoners is a working group of the Independent Media Center and “the largest source of books for the state and federal prisons of Illinois,” according to a recent press release. And no wonder — at the time this article was written, Books to Prisoners has distributed 177,274 books to 24,241 incarcerated individuals since 2004, with the running totals always on the rise.
Most books are community donations, with in-demand topics ranging from Norse mythology and Manga to “popular things like learning a trade or starting a business,” says Emmerling, who often finds herself on the receiving end of such requests. “I believe in the power of books,” she said. “Reading the letters is very rewarding, especially when a reader writes back commenting on a particular book … or if a reader requests a specific topic, and we actually have that spot-on book.” All requests are made by snail-mail. When titles become oversaturated or under-requested (or don’t meet the program’s requirements), they are sold back to the community via the annual book sale, and the cycle begins anew.
For the most part, funds generated from the book sale cover lofty shipping costs from Urbana to shelves across the state — the most resource-intensive part of the process, says Emmerling. The payoff, though, is well worth it. “Their worlds, in some ways, are so small that this is their way to explore and experience new things outside their own minds,” she said. “Literacy plays such a large role in recidivism … People would be surprised.” In the last dozen years, community book sales like this one have buoyed Books to Prisoners to the tune of $82,000, says bookkeeper Frank DiNovo. In 2021, the organization’s first event post-COVID generated a record-breaking 33% of its income. The spring 2023 sale raised $5,289; DiNovo hopes for a similar (if not greater) total this October. Saturday’s sale features fiction and nonfiction; children’s and young adult titles; textbooks and coffee table books; and merchandise including t-shirts, stickers, and totes. Well-represented topics include theater, gender and women’s studies, and Catholicism.
CU Books to Prisoners Book Sale
Independent Media Center
202 S. Broadway Ave
Urbana
Sa October 7th
9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Free but bring money for books or donations