Reading Corner | Horry County’s First Book receives grants to help children
Team First Book-Horry County has announced approval of a series of grants totaling more than $18,500 to assist local programs in serving 3,325 children who might not otherwise receive new books.
First Book will be able to provide 1,785 books for children, thanks to two generous donations of $2,500 from The Jackson Companies of Myrtle Beach and the Waccamaw Community Foundation.
Programs receiving grants include Loris, North Myrtle Beach and Whittemore Park middle schools; Myrtle Beach, Palmetto Bays and Waccamaw elementary schools; Seacoast Youth Academy; Kids Hope USA, serving Loris Elementary School; and other organizations serving children from low income households.
Grant recipients can access their accounts on First Book’s Marketplace at www.fbmarketplace.org. Beneficiaries will find an array of interesting and relevant books to purchase for the children they serve. Children receive books, enabling them to start their own home libraries to share with their siblings and families. They also receive a bookplate on which to place their names, celebrating the importance of book ownership. First Book works nationally with children’s book publishers to increase the diversity of cultures represented in children’s books.
First Book-Horry County will continue its fundraising efforts in 2015, beginning with its sold-out Spring Luncheon, featuring novelist Cassandra King, April 11. Though the luncheon is sold out, tickets are now available for a June 20luncheon with Lowcountry novelist Dorothea Benton Frank at Prestwick Country Club. For reservations, call Pam Clifton at 333-3655 or Mona Prufer at 349-2087.
From staff reports
Subhed
If you know who Robert Ruark was, you probably know that the author of “The Old Man and the Boy” was born in Wilmington, N.C., and spent a lot of his boyhood in Southport, N.C.
You might also know that Robert Godfrey wrote “The Prince of Parthia” — the first American drama to be produced onstage — while he was in Wilmington, shortly before he died of a fever there in 1763.
But did you know that Mrs. Rudyard Kipling lived in the Port City for a while?
Those are some of the things you might discover on the Literary History Walking Tour, starting next month, courtesy of Old Books on Front Street.
Proprietor Gwenyfar Rohler plans to start the tour on April 18 and continue it every Saturday thereafter, beginning at 1:30 p.m. at the bookstore at 249 N. Front St.
“The amount of material we found amazed me,” Rohler said. “The trick will be keeping it under 90 minutes long.”
The tour will cover famous authors who lived in the Port City (expect a stop by St. James churchyard where Godfrey is buried) and locations from books. Rohler will point out former homes of the old Morning Star and other newspapers, and well as locations of historic libraries.
A stop at Thalian Hall (where Oscar Wilde, Frederick Douglass and other authors lectured) is also on the itinerary.
As for Mrs. Kipling, the American Caroline Balestier married the author of “The Jungle Book” in 1892 at All Souls Church in London, with Henry James as one of the witnesses. She apparently did live in Wilmington a while, but details will have to wait for the tour.
Tickets for the tour will be $8. For more information, call Old Books on Front at 910-762-6657.
Ben Steelman, Star-News (Wilmington)
This story was originally published March 28, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Reading Corner | Horry County’s First Book receives grants to help children."