Last week, I left my position as a Strategic Alliances intern and officially joined the First Book staff as a Recipient Group Coordinator.  After trading in my 10^th floor office for a new office on the 9^th floor and saying farewell to the Strategic Alliances team, I headed to our warehouse in Harrisonburg, VA for my very first First Book assignment: hand-packing a special book order for doctors’ offices and medical clinics in greater New York.  As a Strategic Alliances intern I spent the fall learning about First Book’s corporate partnerships, so I was thrilled to be able to see our warehouse and learn about the logistics of how we actually get books to kids.

After a traffic-less drive to Harrisonburg, we arrived at the warehouse caffeinated and ready to spend the day getting books to the kids of New York. Our task: hand pack 37 special orders consisting of 15 different titles, including the Eric Carle classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and several bilingual books including My First Spanish Truck Book. Our estimated time to finish counting, packing, weighing and labeling the orders: one day.

So into the chilly warehouse we went! We had planned to be done counting the orders by lunchtime so we could spend the rest of the afternoon taping and weighing the boxes. But when 1:00 PM rolled around and we had only packed half of the orders we quickly realized this project was going to take much longer than just one day.  By the end of the day, sore  muscles, freezing hands and all we decided we were going to have to return to Harrisonburg the next day to finish what we had started.

So in the true First Book spirit, we set out alarms for 5:30 am and headed back to Harrisonburg on Wednesday.  Thanks to help from our friends at the warehouse, we had all 37 orders ready to go by late afternoon.

Despite the long drive, aching backs and numerous paper cuts, it was an amazing feeling to know that in just a few weeks children in the greater New York area will open the pages of brand new books and experience the joy and magic of  reading.