A pop-up book market held over the weekend to raise funds for sick kids proved to be a tremendous success.
The Children's Hospital Book Market hosted a one-day event at St. Vital Centre, raising over $33,000 in just seven hours.
"This money will help fund Child Life programming at Winnipeg's Children's Hospital, bringing comfort to sick and injured kids and their families," said the Children's Hospital Foundation of Manitoba in a post on social media.
Child Life programming provides comfort and support to children and their families during extended hospital stays. It includes music therapy, the library program, CHTV (the hospital’s closed-circuit television station for kids) and a playroom with toys, games, crafts and a mini hospital where children can play out their experiences with treatments and procedures.
The one-day special event featured a variety of genres, including fiction, mystery, romance, cookbooks, science, travel, computer and university titles.
It also featured all things music, with everything from CDs to DVDs and LPs to a wide selection of how-to books for singing and playing instruments. There will also be a wide selection of puzzles.
Carol Irving, volunteer coordinator for the Children's Hospital Book Market, says she finds that the public is starving for books.
"We typically in the past have had only two big sales a year, one in April and one in September," said Irving. "So we found by having these smaller sales that we are attracting a large crowd of people. And they're very thankful for us doing this because people who bought books in September, by February, when we had a pop-up sale, they were starving for books and just very, very, very thankful that we were offering this to the public. So we're experimenting."
The next Children's Hospital Book Market pop-up sale will take place at St. Vital Centre on Oct. 18.