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If there is one thing I’m not ashamed we have a lot of, it is books.  We read a lot.  Together, by ourselves, out loud to our baby dolls, it doesn’t matter.  We love to read and it is a big part of our life.  We have a huge children’s reading library, and we have gotten it for really cheap.  Here are some ideas to start building your library.

Start at the baby shower.  Make it a reading theme, have all of the guests bring their favorite book with a note to baby in it.  Want to make it even bigger?  Host an online book baby shower to earn FREE books on top of the books you are gifted.

Check local Facebook garage sale sites.  Quite often you can find lots of books that people are just donating for free, otherwise, they are often cheap to buy.

Craigslist.  Same thing as the online garage sale sites.

Garage sales.  These are my favorite anyways, but you can generally find kids’ books for .25 or .50 each.

Book orders through schools or early childhood programs.  When I know about an order form being out, I love to order the $0.99 books.  Whether we keep them or give them as gifts, they are just such a great price I order all of them, usually a few every book order.

Gifts.  People always ask what to get for birthday or holiday gifts.  This is a great time to bring up books.

Book exchange.  I just did one of these, you know what I’m talking about?  Like a chain letter, only for books.  The gist of it is that you get 36 books for the price of 1.  It didn’t really work out that way for us, but we sent out one book and so far have gotten 3 from the book exchange.

Win.  If you scour the internet, or follow some of your favorite blogs, you can often times find some giveaways for some books.  I know I’ve had a few book giveaways here, and there just may be another one coming up this month.

Host an online book party.  Host an Usborne books party with me and earn FREE books from your party.  It’s simple, fun and my hostesses walk away with tons of FREE books.

These are some of the ways that we have built up our extensive children’s library.  Did I miss any bargain building library ideas?  What is your child’s favorite story?