Books for a Better World

November 2009

We, as the Books for a Better World board, would like to extend a warm welcome to Kira Gartell, Wendy Finlayson, and Jan McLaughlin to the Board of Directors!

As stated before, Books for a Better World has transformed rapidly over the past decade. Just in the past two months, we have welcomed a new President, Alice Finn Gartell. Alice has served on the Board of Directors since 2004 as our Director of Books, or more affectionately known as, “Reina de los libros” or “Queen of the Books”.

Alice met Kae Robb, our late founder, in early 2004 and instantly has a connection over their love of storybooks. Alice, at the time, was running a traveler-sustained library project in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, where storybooks were delivered to local libraries one backpack/suitcase/bag at a time. She merged this project with Books for a Better World shortly after joining the board in late 2004. Her love of sharing imagination through reading has always been a joy and central to her work with BBW. In addition, she has traveled to work on other projects in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras while maintaining the Mexico project. Her tireless effort in buying quality storybooks, picture dictionaries, and collections of poems, legends, and myths still continues to be an aspect of the work that she thoroughly enjoys. Explore our Featured Books page and check out some of the fantastic books Alice has chosen for our programs.