Know a Family Impacted by ICE?

I’m Your Neighbor Books would like to help.

Sanctuary Stories are free, hand-selected books shipped to children impacted by family detention, deportation, or fear. Books can be a crucial sanctuary—a place of refuge, safety, and healing.

Sanctuary Stories & Family Safety

Book Selection

IYNB will choose a book(s) for a child impacted by ICE. That selection may include stories of families dealing with immigration issues and/or stories that simply embrace them in the joy of community. The more information you give us about the child, the stronger the book connection will be.
NOTE: We will NOT ask you for any specific information about the child or family that would allow us or others to identify them.

Book Delivery

IYNB will send the book(s) to your address for you (or another ally) to deliver to the family.
NOTE: For the family’s safety, IYNB does not want the family’s name, direct address, or any other way we can identify them. To protect your privacy, we will not retain any of your identifying information after we ship the package.

Requesting Sanctuary Stories

By Form

IYNB would love you to fill out this Google Form.
Once we retrieve your request, we will delete your digital information.

By Phone

You are also welcome to leave a message on our land line at (207) 613-1619.
Once we retrieve your request, we will delete your digital information.

Information Needed for a Good Book Selection

  1. Age of the child(ren)
  2. Gender of the child(ren)
  3. Community(ies) they identify with
  4. Language they prefer (will accommodate if we can)
  5. Any details you can share about the family that will help me connect their story to a book (optional)
  6. Your (or other safe 3rd party) name, email, and mailing address to send books to for local delivery to the family

Child or Children?

While our funding lasts, we would like to serve all of the children in your affected family or group. You can use the form to request books for up to 4 individual children. Feel free to fill out the form again for a larger group.

Supporting Sanctuary Stories

Please consider a donation to support this crucial ongoing project.

Sharing Sanctuary Stories

IYNB may take pictures of the books we send and share those pictures on social media. If we do, no identifying details about your family will be included in the post. Why do we mention this work on social media? 
Because sharing brings us more requests like yours and, frankly, more donations to continue this work.

 

“We need books to break open our hearts, so that we might feel more deeply, so that we might be more human in these unkind times.”

—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street on reading Efrén Divided/Efrén dividido