Environmentally-Themed Children's Book Drive in Chappaqua

Joey Piergiovanni, a high school junior from Eastchester, has created a book drive in Chappaqua to collect environmentally-themed children’s books for mini-libraries that he’s creating for local Westchester YMCA day care facilities. The Central Northern Westchester YMCA Early Learning Centers in White Plains and Valhalla will be the first to receive his book donations.

Joey has started an initiative to teach young children about the importance of the environment and our responsibilities toward it by creating donation bins for parents to drop off new and gently-used children’s books themed around the topics of the environment, sustainability and/or endangered animals. Joey currently has donation bins at Scattered Books in Chappaqua located at 29 King Street, and also at The Village Bookstore located at 10 Washington Avenue in Pleasantville. He is also approaching other local independent bookstores in Westchester to house one of his donation bins for the next few weeks to make it easy for parents to drop off books that their children have outgrown.

Some examples of the types of children’s books that Joey is hoping to collect include ones themed around the environment and conservation such as “The Watcher” detailing the life and work of Jane Goodall, “Don’t Let Them Disappear” discussing the importance of some of the endangered animals of the world, and “Bee and Me” detailing the importance of bees in our ecosystem.

Joey has also created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to purchase environmentally-themed books from independent bookstores in Westchester for parents who want to support his efforts but might not have books to donate. On Joey’s donation bin, he has a QR code printed that links to his GoFundMe campaign (https://gofund.me/6c9b3fd9).

Joey’s hope is to create multiple mini-libraries for Westchester YMCA day care centers where the books can be rotated every few months among the facilities thereby keeping the books fresh and interesting for the young children served by the centers. The goal of these mini-libraries is to enrich the children's’ experiences, knowledge and awareness of environmental issues. This rotating idea for the donated books goes along with Joey’s focus on sustainability and reusability as more children will be exposed to the environmental theme of each book at the different day care centers.

For Joey, the environment has always been important to him. He has been volunteering at the Greenburgh Nature Center for several years working with young children by assisting them in developing an understanding about our planet and our place in the world. Joey says, “As a volunteer at the nature center, I handle the animals and help the children get comfortable with some of the more unfamiliar ones like snakes and lizards. I really enjoy seeing the fascination and smiles when the children overcome their fears when I talk about how these animals are part of our ecosystem.”

As he says, “I’ve created this initiative because I’m extremely passionate about the environment and want to educate children to promote conversation and conservation. By raising their awareness from a young age, I hope they will contribute to keeping our planet and its inhabitants healthy.”