How Your Humble Contribution Helps CBLDF!

NEIL-GAIMAN_510x380You’re protecting the right to read when you support the Neil Gaiman Rarities Bundle! Every contribution to this record-breaking bundle supports the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s important work. From front-line efforts against censorship in schools and libraries, to legal aid for those who need it most, to the best education program  in comics, your contribution counts! Here’s how you’re making a difference.

Your Contributions Stop Censorship!

So far, CBLDF has fought more than two dozen attempts to ban books in schools and libraries in 2015. Thanks to our efforts, we’ve kept books on shelves, including The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell, Drama by Raina Telgemeier, This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez, and many, many others. CBLDF is first on the case when free speech emergencies arise. We work directly with affected teachers and librarians to protect their right to teach and kids’ right to read. Your support makes this vital work possible!

You’ll Help Creators and Retailers Who Need Legal Support.

CBLDF is the first call the comics community makes in times of legal crisis. This year, we have provided legal support and referrals in nearly a dozen cases. These range from helping quash meritless legal actions against cartoonists plying their craft to shutting down unlawful criminal investigations into the reading habits of comics fans. We also provide advice and referrals to professionals who need to find a trustworthy lawyer. At our best, you’ll never know the details of these cases because we’ve shut them down long before they get anywhere near a courtroom. Your support ensures we can continue to do this important work.

You’ll Help Raise Awareness.

Thanks to the Gaiman Foundation, CBLDF provides the best popular education program in comics. With topics ranging from censorship news, using comics in the classroom, banned comics, censorship history, community building, and practical ways to fight censorship, CBLDF’s resources speak to a wide range of needs, and support many important audiences. In addition to our daily news blog and weekly email newsletter originating from www.cbldf.org, our current work includes these ongoing projects:

CBLDF Defenderour quarterly news magazine, bursting with the latest in the fight for free expression, features, interviews, and resources. Each issue is free in comic book stores and online. Here’s our current edition:

Banned Books Week — CBLDF is a proud sponsor of Banned Books Week, the annual celebration of the Freedom to Read. This year’s Banned Books Week starts on September 27. We’ve created a wide variety of resources to help you celebrate, including the CBLDF Banned Books Week Handbook, available below.

Raising A Reader: How Comics & Graphic Novels Can Help Your Kids Love to Read — With more than 80,000 copies in print, Raising a Reader! answers the questions parents and educators bring to using comics: What skills do graphic novels offer kids? How do you teach reading with a comics page? How do comics promote a love of reading? It’s an indispensable tool for showcasing the value of graphic novels, and chock full of reading suggestions and title recommendations to get kids engaged with this exciting medium!

Comic Book Club HandbookDesigned for librarians, retailers, and individuals alike, the Comic Book Club Handbook goes inside the how’s and why’s of creating a graphic novel book club. The handbook provides proven strategies for getting started, selecting books, engaging your community, managing discussions, and much more, including a helpful table of books to get you started!

CBLDF Comics Connector — The CBLDF Comics Connector is a free a resource that lists comics creators and industry professionals who are able to provide lectures and workshops for schools and libraries. The CBLDF Comics Connector is organized by country, followed by state or province, and entries in each state are alphabetical by creator’s last name. Currently, the CBLDF Comics Connector includes more than one hundred creators from 22 US states and three Canadian provinces. Check out the CBLDF Comics Connector here.

CBLDF offers these resources and much, much more, all thanks to the support of the Gaiman Foundation and donors like you!

The Neil Gaiman Rarities Bundle will help us continue these programs and launch even more work in 2016.

If you’ve supported the bundle — thank you! If you haven’t, please consider making a contribution of any amount to receive some of Neil’s hardest to find and most rarely seen books. Pledge $15 or beat the average to receive some of Neil’s rarest work, including his biography of Duran Duran, lost graphic novel Sweeney Todd, and even more! There’s no contribution too small. Even a pledge of $1 helps CBLDF’s work and gets you two full-length Neil Gaiman books, his 24-hour comic, and two collections of speeches and essays!

This bundle is already making history. Thanks to the incredible generosity of Neil’s fans, this was Humble’s fastest rising average ever, and is the first bundle in which the average payment actually exceeded the amount being asked for the fixed price “stretch” offer. It could become Humble’s biggest ebook bundle ever!

No matter what happens, it will make a huge difference to CBLDF’s important work. Thank you for being a part of it!