Book collector Sibylla Shekerdjiska-Benatova has helped give away more than 13,000 children’s books over the past decade — and plans to distribute more.
“Every book that comes in my hands and I fall in love with it, I really want to share it with more people,” she told PA Local.
In 2014, Shekerdjiska-Benatova started A Book a Day, a program based in West Philadelphia that selects unused, mostly hardcover children’s books to donate to local schools and institutions. Her work with the nonprofit inspired a Spotlight PA reader to nominate her for PA Local Heroes, a monthly series sponsored by Ballard Spahr that profiles Pennsylvanians making a positive difference in their communities. “Her commitment to books and beauty for all is an inspiration,” her nominator wrote.
Shekerdjiska-Benatova, a paper conservation technician by day, grew up in Bulgaria and moved to Philadelphia in 2000. She started A Book a Day after an upsetting 2013 incident that she declined to discuss in detail but credited with revealing to her “how people in the U.S. view education and access to education,” and the racial inequality present in the system.
“I couldn’t believe that I had been so blind up until then, even though you see these signals everywhere,” Shekerdjiska-Benatova said. “I turned to [my husband] and I said, I know it’s … maybe the smallest thing that we can do, but we have to do something.”
Her idea was to start buying new, “beautiful books” — like the ones she read to her own children — to donate weekly to Title I schools in her area. She consulted principals, teachers, and literacy specialists at two West Philly schools to learn what their libraries needed.
The effort gradually expanded. A Book a Day obtained nonprofit status in 2020 and now has a team of “funny, collaborative” people behind it — many of them first-generation immigrant women, per the nonprofit’s website. The program focuses on serving children of color, queer and immigrant kids, and those from families with low incomes.
It now supports schools beyond West Philly, as well as other institutions across Philadelphia, like social services nonprofit Puentes de Salud, the University of Pennsylvania’s mobile dental clinic, and Philly FIGHT’s pediatric clinics. Depending on what makes sense for the specific organization, some of the books become part of library collections, while others are gifted to kids to take home and keep.
The organization carefully curates the books it donates (all of which are posted to its website). The nine-person staff closely follows recent releases, and education students from Penn recommend works they’ve encountered in their studies. When it’s feasible, a staff member attends the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy.
In deciding which titles make the final cut, A Book a Day considers lots of factors, from how genuinely they represent cultures to the legibility of the typeface.
The org specifically seeks out titles that promote “visual literacy,” Shekerdjiska-Benatova said. The team likes books that are more “avant-garde,” she explained: “They may not be the first book that a librarian would order.”
A lot of their selections have what she called “a strong Bauhaus element,” featuring “simple, symbolic shapes.”
“We’re intentional about this,” Shekerdjiska-Benatova said, “because we think children should have these simple elements and then combine them in the way that makes meaning in the best way that they can process it.”
They also seek books that encourage children to “explore, experiment, get excited, and be rebellious,” she said, so that kids can learn how to stand up for themselves and expect more than just “good enough” from the world.
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The effort is multilingual. Over a third of donated books are written in a language other than English, and the share of non-English books has grown with each passing year, Shekerdjiska-Benatova said. (Almost all of A Book a Day’s medical center partners serve immigrant youth, she noted.)
The nonprofit embarks on some other projects and initiatives too, from coordinating author and illustrator visits to hosting an Archive of Letters and Voices, in which 24 writers and artists write to children.
A Book a Day’s work is funded largely by grants, according to Shekerdjiska-Benatova, alongside some individual donations.
Shekerdjiska-Benatova hopes that A Book a Day encourages children — and other people who interact with the program — to expand their perspectives, recognize that there are multiple ways to approach problems, and understand how their differences can bring more solutions to the table.
“I hope that our program will give people the space to think,” she said. “I hope we build an opportunity for people to start thinking more globally.”
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