Twin Cities children’s authors are responding to the August 27 mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis in the best way they know how: providing solace with books. Two local children’s book authors are spearheading book drives, and a third is using donations made to her literary nonprofit organization to buy books for the school.
Karlyn Coleman, a former English teacher at Annunciation Catholic School whose children graduated from there, is leading a book drive and has compiled a list of recommended titles that includes categories specifically requested by Annunciation students. Coleman has been soliciting book donations since September 3, when she proposed the book drive to the school’s librarian and media specialist, Megan Stebbins.
More than 800 books have been donated to date, including 200 copies of The Rabbit Listened by Minneapolis author Cori Doerrfeld that were donated by PRH. Another 300 copies of Doerrfeld's 2018 picture book about the power of empathy and kindness, also donated by PRH, have been distributed already to other schools in the neighborhood. Stebbins will distribute the books gathered by Coleman to Annunciation students. Books will also be donated to three public schools nearby and to Children’s Minnesota Hospital – Minneapolis.
Book donations can be mailed to or dropped off at 5333 Colfax Avenue S., Minneapolis, MN 55419, or else ordered from local indie children’s bookstore Wild Rumpus.
As for author Abby Cooper, the day after the shooting she left a stack of books at a memorial set up outside Annunciation that “were gone instantly,” she told PW. She said she has now earmarked all donations received this month by A Book of My Own, the nonprofit she founded in 2023 to provide books free of charge to Minnesota school children, for Annunciation. To date, Cooper has raised more than $1,000 and donated more than 50 new books to Coleman’s book drive.
“Books are a powerful tool to help students process, cope, and grieve,” Cooper said. “They also provide a much-needed comfort and escape. I am so glad to be part of this effort.”
Meanwhile, author Anne Ursu is raising money to buy copies from Wild Rumpus of the newly published Not Like Every Day: Finding Calm During School Lockdown Drills by Stephanie Lucianovic, a Bay Area–based children’s author who, coincidentally, grew up in Minneapolis around the corner from Ursu and attended high school less than three miles away from Annunciation.
Ursu, who lives a mile from Annunciation, launched her fundraiser last week. She has to date raised $2,300, enough to buy about 150 copies of Not Like Every Day from Wild Rumpus. Copies of the book, which was released by Random House Books for Young Readers on September 2, will be distributed at Annunciation and donated to other Twin Cities area schools as well. Ursu also plans to buy a crate of books from Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul to be handed out to attendees at RBB’s educators’ night on September 25.
“This has shaken everybody in the community,” Ursu said, “and it has put so much more fear into children’s hearts. There’s nothing more to be said about it, except for how horrific that we live like this as a society. It’s sickening that there would be such a demand for a book like this that a Big Five publisher decided to publish it. But I’m grateful that they did have the courage to publish it.”
For Lucianovic, the newfound relevance of her book is bittersweet. “While I know that school shootings have become a horrifically and seemingly inevitable part of our everyday reality—which is why I wrote the book in the first place, I definitely never thought my book would be put to use in this exact way,” Lucianovic told PW from her home in California. “Having my book involved makes me feel like I'm able to hug my hometown from afar.”
