Books & Brunch is a fun event that really serves the community
By Sara Clarkson The Doings October 27, 2011
Books & Brunch will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 8
this year, and there are a lot of things to like about this annual
event starting with the “books” part. Anything, anytime, anywhere that
has to do with books is of immediate interest to me, but then if you say
that the authors are coming, will be selling and signing their books as
well as discussing them during the lunch, that in and of itself makes
for something out of the ordinary. Then, too, the meal is usually pretty
good and certainly it’s nice to be among 300-plus other people enjoying
the various vendors as well as checking out and bidding on silent
auction items and raffle baskets. But really, the best part of Books
& Brunch is what happens with the monies raised.
Books & Brunch is the main fund-raiser for
Assistance League Chicagoland West, a local chapter of the national
assistance league. The Chicagoland West group directly serves the
Greater Hinsdale/Clarendon Hills/Burr Ridge area, including Darien,
Willowbrook, Western Springs, Lombard, West Chicago and Villa Park. In
the past year alone it has provided brand new coats, hats and mittens to
nearly 2,000 (two thousand!) students in those towns — and that figure
does indeed include students from Hinsdale and Clarendon Hills; it has
provided close to 700 backpacks to early readers in Head Start programs
from those towns and will outfit kitchens for 75 families who are moving
from the state of homelessness into their own homes and will be able to
cook for themselves and their families.
“We’re a small group but we do a lot,” said
Maureen Hegarty, a Books & Brunch co-chairman, noting that the
assistance league is the only Illinois chapter. It is a committed and
results-oriented chapter. A quick glance at the membership reveals more
than 60 women who are involved and active in a number of community
organizations — a group of women who really know how to get things done
and do them well. Books & Brunch, now in its 15th year, has
continued to grow, now in its 16th year.
The local league is the only branch which has a
Books & Brunch-type luncheon as its major fund-raiser. Many of the
other leagues have thrift shops which generate money for their
philanthropic projects. Just last year, the league started an eBay site
in order to sell used jewelry, table top and hostess items and some
designer goods, and Madelon Pearlman has been heading up that effort.
She has been an member for 9 years now.
“I like that all the money we raise is used in our community,” she said.
“I like to know where my money is going,” she added. “There are no administrative costs here.”
Since all members are volunteers, they are the
ones doing all of the work, including buying and distributing the coats
for the children, for example.
That hands-on approach, that roll-up-your-sleeves
involvement is what appeals to the women who join, according to Meg
Cooper, the other co-chairman of Books & Brunch. She has been a
member for 11 years.
At Books & Bruch this year, all three authors
— Luis Urrea, Melanie Benjamin and Marcus Sakey — have ties to Chicago
and are once again notable in their own right. For example, Urrea was a
2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his non-fiction work The Devil’s Highway,
the account of illegal Mexican immigrants who got lost in Arizona’s
desert. Urrea is of Mexican and American descent and has written both
nonfiction and fiction. He lives in Naperville with his family and
teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb: A Novel
is Benjamin’s most recent novel published in July this year. This is
the fictionalized account of the real-life Lavinia Warren, the 32-inch
tall wife of circus oddity Tom Thumb, and is set in the mid-nineteenth
century. Benjamin lives in Chicago with her husband and two sons.
Sakey, a Chicago resident, once worked in the
graphic design field before starting to write criminal fiction, fiction
which he meticulously researches by shadowing homicide detectives and
the like. The Blade Itself was his debut novel, and The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes is his latest work.
Tickets for Books & Bruch are $80, and it
will be held at the Abbington on Route 53 and Butterfield Road in Glen
Ellyn. The morning begins at 10 with book signings and a the opportunity
to visit the vendors as well as sign up for silent auction items and
buy raffle tickets for the various baskets. The brunch starts at 11:45
a.m. and the author talks will start about 12:45 p.m. For more
information about Books & Brunch, visit the website at www.alcw.org
or phone its office at 119 E. Ogden Ave., in Hinsdale at (630) 323-2529.
