{"id":26876,"date":"2018-08-28T07:55:39","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T11:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=26876"},"modified":"2018-08-28T07:55:39","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T11:55:39","slug":"indiebookcrawl-for-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=26876","title":{"rendered":"#IndieBookCrawl for Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-26884 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/schwind-pic-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"251\" height=\"320\" \/>On Sunday, three visitors strode into the store with purpose. I had a hunch they\u00a0might be\u00a0teachers, because the children&#8217;s books they\u00a0asked for were particularly interesting, recent, and a couple of them are still\u00a0slightly off the radar of the general reading public.\u00a0It turned out these field-savvy literary savants were indeed teachers, and one of them, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CynthiaSchwind\">Cindy Schwind<\/a>\u00a0from Rochester, N.Y.,\u00a0was on a very special mission: to gather books from indie bookstores throughout Vermont for a nationwide Twitter raffle for teachers.<br \/>\n&#8220;We&#8217;re on an indie book crawl,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We did five stores on Friday, seven stores on Saturday, and six stores today. You&#8217;re our final stop on the tour.&#8221;<br \/>\nWow! That&#8217;s one more than a\u00a0complete haiku of bookstores, and\u00a0includes more stores than even I&#8217;ve been to in my own state. I had to know more about her idea for the book crawl.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n&#8220;I just wanted to do something to inspire teachers and get books into classrooms,&#8221; she said, &#8220;as well as supporting independent bookstores and authors.\u00a0We&#8217;d gone to a bunch of bookstores in the Boston area earlier this summer, and it was so much fun and so successful that we thought we&#8217;d do Vermont next summer. But then we thought, &#8216;Hey, let&#8217;s just do it at the end of this summer!&#8217; So here we are.&#8221;<br \/>\nI love the thoughtfulness behind her <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23indiebookcrawl&amp;src=typd\">#indiebookcrawl<\/a> idea. They buy three books at each store*, and then post them on Twitter for the raffle.\u00a0And there&#8217;s more to it: Cindy not only celebrates books and bookstores, she also requires teachers entering the raffle to follow the authors and bookstores and publishers on Twitter \u2014 and to retweet her post about the books \u2014 in order to win. So she&#8217;s not just distributing books to classrooms around the country, but increasing readership and engagement,\u00a0creating a whole web of connections. It&#8217;s a\u00a0perfectly executed idea, and I know\u00a0must take a LOT of effort on their part.<br \/>\nCindy has given away dozens of books through her #indiebookcrawl raffle, and I have a feeling she and her husband, dynamic fourth-grade teacher Scott Schwind, will be doing another crawl next summer.<br \/>\n&#8220;It&#8217;s a little exhausting,&#8221; she admitted, &#8220;but we love it!&#8221;<br \/>\nWe were honored to be the final stop on their tour. We hope they made it back to Rochester safely, and are getting a little well-earned nap or two before the school year starts. I also\u00a0mentioned the fantastic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rcbfestival.com\/\">Rochester Children&#8217;s Book Festival<\/a> to them, and they\u00a0said they&#8217;ve been planning to attend for\u00a0the first time this year. Hooray!<br \/>\nThree cheers for the Schwinds, the patient\u00a0friend traveling with them, and the fabulous #indiebookcrawl!<br \/>\n*Books they chose at the Flying Pig: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9781620143568\">Ahimsa<\/a><\/em> by <a href=\"https:\/\/supriyakelkar.com\/\">Supriya Kelkar<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.leeandlow.com\/books\/ahimsa\">Tu\/Lee &amp; Low<\/a>), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9780765385581\"><em>Ban This Book<\/em><\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alangratz.com\/\">Alan Gratz<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tor.com\/tag\/starscape\/\">Starscape\/Tor<\/a>), and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9780763694746\"><em>The Dollar Kids<\/em><\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jenniferjacobson.com\/\">Jennifer Richard Jacobson<\/a>, illustrated by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ryan-a.com\/illustration\/index.htm\">Ryan Andrews<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.candlewick.com\/\">Candlewick<\/a>).<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-26882 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Grand-Finale-pic-best-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"472\" height=\"445\" \/><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Rochester teacher&#8217;s brilliant book idea. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}