United Way of Greater Portland's Brick & Beam Society BYOB (Bring Your Own Book) 

Join the Brick & Beam Society Wednesday, April 4 at Maine Craft Distilling for our third annual Bring Your Own Book event! Belatedly celebrating the illustrious Dr. Seuss’ birthday and Read Across America Day (March 2) Brick & Beam Society is popping up again for the third year with our friends from 5:30-7:00 PM to support early childhood literacy in our local community.

This event is FREE and open to the public with plenty of complimentary off-street parking, but please bring new or gently used books written by educators’ favorites— Tomie dePaola, Anna Dewdney, and/ or Mo Willems, authors of childhood must-reads like Strega Nona, Llama Llama Red Pajama, and The Pigeon Needs a Bath! 

In our inaugural year, Brick & Beam members and friends collected 150 books for Westbrook Schools’ annual author study series, where students across the district read multiple books from the same author; last year, we broke our stretch goal of 200 books for students in local Portland elementary schools! Can we beat those numbers and fill the bookshelves? Join us in booking it to get these authors’ titles in time:

• Buy local: Letterpress Books, Longfellow Books, Print: A Bookstore, and Sherman’s Books;
• Click and go: Brick & Beam’s Amazon Wish List;
• Can’t make it? Drop off at United Way (1 Canal Plaza, Suite 300, Portland, ME) or have Amazon ship it to us on your behalf.

Additionally, we’ll have a donate at the door option via our DipJar AND Maine Craft Distilling has generously offered to donate a $1 per signature drink back to this important work in our community!

Questions? Feel free to e-mail us at brickandbeam@unitedwaygp.org. First Wednesdays— our monthly pop-up happy hours are an easy way to meet some of our members, learn about our innovative way of approaching philanthropy thanks to our roots within the United Way of Greater Portland network. Maine Craft Distilling will be open to the public; all are welcome, but please RSVP by Tuesday, April 3.