Making Book Displays for Mental Health Awareness Month

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the Mental Health Association would like help to prepare for a project with Rappahannock County Public Library and surrounding schools in Rappahannock. We want to give children and adolescents access to books that include characters experiencing mental wellness challenges and demonstrating positive coping strategies. Through reading, or being read to, a story similar to their own lives, children and adolescents will experience characters dealing with an issue objectively which can then be applied to their own, their friends’ or their family’s challenges. We plan to give each school library and the public library a set of developmentally appropriate mental wellness themed books.

Volunteers will help us 1) create book displays that will share information about mental wellness and help the books stand out, 2) place age appropriate bookplates in each of the books to share mental health resource contact information, and 3) package the materials and deliver the boxes to the library and the schools.

Since this is a Rappahannock County program, we would hope to have the volunteers work together at a site in Rappahannock County.