Where Can You Donate Children's Books in Minneapolis?

Give My Books Network collects them free from your door, and a school running a drive is the other reliable option. Classroom drives are seasonal, though, and a doorstep collection is not.

A Local Pick-Up Partner is the locally owned family business that does the collecting in your part of the city. Enter your ZIP code, pick a service day, and set the box out. If no partner serves your block yet, the request enters the out-of-area pickup system, where a nearby partner may claim it.

What Children's Books Are Most Needed in Minneapolis?

Picture books, early readers, and chapter books in good, usable shape. Those three categories move fastest through the Give ME Books program, because they are what classrooms and tutoring programs ask for most often.

• Board books and picture books for pre-K and kindergarten reading corners
• Early readers and leveled titles, the ones that get worn out first
• Chapter books and middle-grade series, which after-school programs burn through
• Young adult fiction, still in steady demand
• Bilingual and multilingual titles, which are genuinely scarce

Do Multilingual Children's Books Get Used?

Very much so. Somali, Hmong, Spanish, and Oromo titles are in real demand in Minneapolis, where those languages are spoken daily in Minneapolis Public Schools classrooms and in community programs across the city.

Families in Cedar-Riverside and North Minneapolis often have a shelf of these books that a child has outgrown, and they are among the hardest titles for a classroom to source. If a box has bilingual books in it, mention that when you book. A Local Pick-Up Partner will know it matters.

How Do You Pack a Child's Bookshelf?

Into one light box, unsorted. Board books, picture books, and chapter books can all ride together, and Local Pick-Up Partners sort everything offsite after collection.

1. Use a small box. Picture books are heavier than they look once forty of them are stacked.
2. Skip the sorting entirely. Mixing sizes and ages is fine.
3. Tape the bottom seam twice in deep cold. Tape goes brittle below zero.
4. Set the box on the covered porch by 8 AM, with a lid or bag over it if snow is falling.

Condition Matters More With Children's Books

Children's books take a beating, and condition is the one place to be honest with yourself. A chewed corner is fine. A board book that has been in a mouth for two years and a puddle for one is not.

Keep anything readable, including scribbled endpapers and taped spines. Leave behind anything mold-damaged, water-swollen, or missing pages. The American Library Association's book donation guide for libraries holds the same line, and for the same reason: a book that comes apart in a child's hands helps nobody.

Where Children's Book Donations Go in Minneapolis

Local Pick-Up Partners sort every collection offsite. Many children's titles are redistributed through the Give ME Books program to Title I classrooms, literacy programs, after-school tutoring, ESL classrooms, and community centers that have requested them. Some items are resold by the partner.

Resale funds the free collection, and Give My Books Network states that rather than dressing it up. No single book is promised to any single classroom, and items that cannot be reused may eventually be recycled as a last resort.

What Does It Cost to Donate Children's Books?

Nothing. No fee, no minimum, and no charge per box, so a single bag of board books is as welcome as ten boxes from a family that just finished with picture books for good.

Give My Books Network and its Local Pick-Up Partners are family businesses rather than 501(c)(3) nonprofits, so there is no tax-deduction receipt. That is the trade: no paperwork, no drive, no cost, and no receipt.