{"id":2153,"date":"2020-02-20T13:55:30","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T18:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2020-02-20T13:55:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T18:55:30","slug":"park-road-books-and-dr-seuss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2020\/02\/20\/park-road-books-and-dr-seuss\/","title":{"rendered":"Park Road Books and Dr. Seuss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I love visiting Park Road Books, and I love reading Dr. Seuss\u2019s stories aloud to children.  Drawing on these two loves of mine, I joined forces with Park Road Books to organize our annual Seuss-a-Thon, an event that is now in its 9th<\/sup> year.  This year’s Seuss-a-Thon will take place on February 29 (Saturday) at Park Road Books (4139 Park Road) from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  At the Seuss-a-Thon, local educators and literacy advocates will participate in a four-hour marathon of reading Dr. Seuss\u2019s books aloud to children. Dr. Seuss-themed crafts will be available for children throughout the event, and his books will be on sale at a discount throughout the day.  In conjunction with this year\u2019s Seuss-a-Thon, Park Road Books will donate to Smart Start (a local literacy organization) one Dr. Seuss book for every two Dr. Seuss books that it sells over the course of the day.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We hold the Seuss-a-Thon on the Saturday closest to the\nbirthday of Dr. Seuss, who was born on March 2, 1904.  The National Education Association always\nsponsors its Read Across America Campaign to coincide with Dr. Seuss\u2019s\nbirthday.  As a long-time children’s\nliterature professor, I am a big supporter of this campaign. \nOne of my goals in organizing the Seuss-a-Thon is to sponsor an event\nthat contributes to this larger literacy campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The annual Seuss-a-Thon is just one of the many ways that Park\nRoad Books contributes to the vitality of Charlotte\u2019s literary community.  Charlotte\u2019s only independent, full-service\nbookstore, Park Road Books regularly partners with local cultural organizations\nto promote the reading of literature. \nEvery year, for example, Park Road Books helps the Charlotte Mecklenburg\nLibrary Foundation with its Verse and Vino fundraising event.  This high-profile event brings bestselling\nauthors to Charlotte, and Park Road Books takes care of ordering and selling\nthese authors\u2019 books to the event\u2019s attendees. \nThe store also works with over thirty area book clubs by providing the\nmembers of these clubs with opportunities to purchase (at a discount) the books\nthat they discuss at their meetings.  In\naddition to working with these area book clubs, the store supports three book\nclubs that meet in the store.  During the\nholiday season, Park Road Books partners with Charlotte-Mecklenburg\u2019s\nCommunities in Schools on a project they call their Book Tree.  This project provides area children with free\nbooks that they can keep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Park Road Books\u2019 connections to the Charlotte literary\ncommunity can be traced back to 1977, when John Barringer founded the bookstore\nunder the name of Little Professor Book Center. \nIn August of 1999, Sally Brewster joined the store, and they changed the\nname to Park Road Books.  She bought the\nstore from Barringer in 2003, and she has run it ever since.  Over the years, she has assembled a dedicated\nstaff, all of whom are avid readers.  Her\nlongest serving staff member is Sherri Smith, the store\u2019s children\u2019s book\nbuyer, who has been working at the store since 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Brewster purchased the store, it was one of several\nindependent bookstores in the city, but these other bookstores have since\nclosed in part because so many people now purchase their books from\nAmazon.  Park Road Books, however, has\ncontinued to prosper, in part because of its many connections to Charlotte\u2019s\nliterary community.  It\u2019s not just a\nretail outlet where one can buy books. \nIt\u2019s also a special place where Charlotte\u2019s readers gather, share book\nrecommendations, attend book signings, and sometimes listen to Dr. Seuss books\nbeing read aloud.  Park Road Books has\nestablished itself as an integral part of storied Charlotte.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love visiting Park Road Books, and I love reading Dr. Seuss\u2019s stories aloud to children.  Drawing on these two loves of mine, I joined forces with Park Road Books to organize our annual Seuss-a-Thon, an event that is now in its 9th year.  This year’s Seuss-a-Thon will take place on February 29 (Saturday) at Park Road […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2163,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions\/2163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}