Where Can I Donate Children's Books in Los Angeles?

Give My Books Network collects them from your door at no cost, anywhere a Local Pick-Up Partner serves. Pack the books, set them out by 8 AM on your service day, and collection happens between 8 AM and 8 PM.

Classroom drives and library branches take children's books too, on a smaller scale and on their own schedule. When the pile is a whole childhood of books, a pickup is the option that will actually take all of it.

Who Receives Children's Book Donations in Los Angeles?

Local Pick-Up Partners sort every collection offsite, and many titles are redistributed through the Give ME Books program to organizations that requested them: Title I classrooms, after-school tutoring programs, literacy groups, shelters, and senior centers with reading hours.

LAUSD serves hundreds of thousands of students, and the Title I classrooms in Boyle Heights and across South LA are the ones most likely to be building a shelf from scratch. Requests get filled from what comes in, so nothing is promised to a specific school on a specific week. Some items are resold by the partner, which pays for the free service.

Are Spanish and Bilingual Children's Books Needed?

Very much so. Demand for Spanish-language and Spanish-English bilingual children's books in Los Angeles is enormous and rarely met, and those titles move quickly once they reach a classroom or a tutoring program.

If a box holds bilingual readers, board books in Spanish, or dual-language picture books, mention it when you book. They are among the most requested titles through the Give ME Books program, and they almost never sit long.

What Condition Do Children's Books Need to Be In?

Readable is the standard, not pristine. Children's books live hard lives, and a bent corner, a crayon mark, or a well-loved spine does not disqualify anything.

• Fine to send — board books, picture books, early readers, chapter books, workbooks, activity books.
• Fine to send — dog-eared pages, a name written inside the cover, a slightly loose binding.
• Leave out — mold, water damage, missing pages, anything a child could not turn without it coming apart.
• Leave out — books with chewed board covers that no longer hold shape.

How Do I Schedule a Free Pickup in Los Angeles?

Enter your ZIP code on the Give My Books Network site, pick a service day, pack the boxes, and set them out by 8 AM. A Local Pick-Up Partner collects them by 8 PM, and you do not need to be home.

A Local Pick-Up Partner is the locally owned family business doing the collecting. Leave the boxes somewhere shaded and dry, and add a note about the callbox or gate code if you are in an apartment. Pack, set out, schedule, done.

What Else Can Go in the Box With the Kids' Books?

Anything else Give My Books Network collects: adult hardcovers and paperbacks, textbooks, encyclopedias, cookbooks, CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, vinyl records, audiobooks on disc, board games, puzzles, and video games. No sorting required.

Families outgrowing a bookshelf almost never outgrow only one shelf. The picture books, the middle-grade series, the DVDs from the same era, and the puzzle with all its pieces can travel in the same load. The American Library Association's guide to book donation programs explains why classroom-ready children's books are so consistently in demand.

Does It Cost Anything?

Nothing. There is no pickup fee, no per-box charge, and no minimum. Two bags of picture books is a real pickup, and so is a decade of a family's reading.

One honest limit: Give My Books Network and its Local Pick-Up Partners are family businesses rather than 501(c)(3) nonprofits, so no tax-deduction receipt is issued. If a receipt is what you need, a registered nonprofit is the right destination.