Dear Friends,
Ever since opening BOOKS of WONDER in 1980, the store has been devoted to promoting a love and devotion to the best children's books of today, while helping preserve the great children's books of childhoods past. Over the past 32 years, BOOKS of WONDER has grown to be a landmark of the New York City landscape. Countless parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians, and all who love great stories and illustration have come to BOOKS of WONDER to find the perfect book for the children they love and meet some of the incredible authors and artists who create these books.
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There have been many ups and downs over the past three decades, but now we face our biggest challenge yet. Due to an enormous, unexpected expense, BOOKS of WONDER finds its future endangered. If the store is to survive, we must raise a minimum of $100,000. With your help, we hope to do just that and keep BOOKS of WONDER open and thriving as New York's premier destination for all those who love children's books.    Your Support Today Will Insure We are Here for You Tomorrow! When we moved into our current space eight years ago, we leased out 40% of the space (including the 1,000 square foot kitchen behind the back wall of the store) to a well-established NYC bakery to provide a cafe for our customers. Unfortunately, the Great Recession was even harder on cupcakes than children's books and they were forced to close, still owing us many months back rent and utilities. Worse still, with the economy hurting, we could not find a new subtenant, and so had to pay the rent on the space we had previously rented. The result of these unexpected expenses, is that BOOKS of WONDER has had to layout over $300,000 in rent and utilities that we expected to be paid by our subtenant. This has strained our resources to the limit. And that is why we are launching this campaign.
We need to raise a minimum of $100,000 if BOOKS of WONDER is to survive and continue our mission of bringing the magic of reading to children and the irreplaceable value of an independent, community-based bookstore to New York City.
Over the years, BOOKS of WONDER has been fortunate to host many incredibly talented authors and artists. When we reached out to them for help with our campaign, their enthusiastic response was overwhelming. Thanks to their immense generosity and talent, we have assembled a wonderful collection of thank you gifts for those of you who contribute. Many of these gifts are exclusive to this campaign and some are truly one-of-a-kind. We have put a lot of effort into making sure that our thank you gifts reflect what BOOKS of WONDER is all about and - most importantly - how very much we treasure your support.    The future of Books of Wonder: This is a crucial moment for BOOKS of WONDER and we know we can come out of this campaign stronger and ready to face the challenges of the future. Everyone here at BOOKS of WONDER is passionate about children's books and loves sharing that passion with the thousands of children and adults who visit us each year from around the New York City area and around the world.
Your contributions today will make it possible for BOOKS of WONDER to be here for many more tomorrows. They will enable us to restore our depleted finances, make some much-needed improvements to the store, continue bringing in great books and the talented authors and artists who create them, and provide you -- our friends and customers -- with the one-of-a-kind experience that has become the hallmark of BOOKS of WONDER.   
There are plenty of ways to help: We are asking for your help in the form of contributions. And truly, no amount is too small. But equally important to making this campaign a success, is having you -- our loyal friends and supporters -- help us spread the word and raise awareness of what we're doing. This is a 30-day campaign and achieving our goal requires that we reach out to as many supporters as possible. And that's another great way you can help us! If seeing BOOKS of WONDER survive and continue to thrive is of importance to you, please share news about what we're doing with your friends, family, colleagues, and anyone else you think might be interested. Use your twitter, facebook, blog -- whatever way you like -- to spread the word. Once again, thank you for your support and generosity in helping us write the next chapter for BOOKS of WONDER. Below are links to view all the gifts we have put together for you and all our supporters to choose from. Simply click any of the levels of contribution below to see what great gifts we've come up with to thank you for your support.   
  
Book of Wonder
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