In case you missed our post earlier this month and don’t know what a blogathon is, it’s similar to a marathon, except instead of running, everybody is blogging! Participants in Blogathon 2006 raise money for charity by blogging for 24 hours in a row, all at the same time, beginning this Saturday, July 29.

Each blogger asks people to sponsor his or her blog. The sponsors pledge to donate a certain dollar amount to the blogger’s chosen charity, either a flat donation, or an amount per hour of blogging.

First Book is a “Suggested Charity” for Blogathon this year, and we have 12 bloggers raising money for us!

Please support First Book by going to the list of bloggers (search for “First Book” to find the ones that are raising money for us) and sponsoring one of them! At the end of the Blogathon you will be directed to First Book’s website to make your donation. Don’t forget that donations to First Book are tax-deductible if you’re in the United States.

So far our 12 bloggers have pledges totalling $1128. Since every $2.50 in donations will buy a brand new book for a child in need, that’s more than 450 books! I think you can do better than that, though. I challenge all of our blog readers to sponsor a blogger and help us raise $2500 to buy 1000 books for children in need.

You can sign up to sponsor a blogger now, or anytime during the Blogathon, or even up to 48 hours after it is finished! It doesn’t need to be a lot of money; $5 is the minimum donation, and every little bit adds up.

And on Saturday, starting at 9:00 am ET (or the corresponding time wherever you are), you can go to the blog of the person you are sponsoring and read! Each blogger will write a post every half hour, for 24 hours. Many of them have themes — i.e, Floatin’ Through The Aether who is doing voice posts every hour — and accepting song requests.

But I do need to point out that while we are super-pleased that all of these bloggers are raising money for First Book, they aren’t affiliated with us and we’re not responsible for the content on their blogs.

Thanks to all of the bloggers and sponsors who are helping us get new books to kids!