The List of Never Giving Up, dedicated to Patrick Ness and his awesome friends and fans

People who write, make, read, and love books have done something really amazing since Thursday morning: Raising a MILLION dollars to help Syrian refugee children!

Well. Well, it's very nearly a million. See, we want to help raise the last $61,919.43. We're pledging $770 (because that's the same as £500), and we're trying to get 19 more bookshops to do the same, and then we'll match your $10,000, and then we'll be a third of the rest of the way so

Join the donation campaign here.

Meanwhile, let's celebrate the authors who have matched donations, raised money, and raised awareness! Here is a reading list of the authors who have made matching donations to help @Patrick_Ness and @savechildrenuk  raise money for the Syrian refugees so far:


Patrick Ness – The Rest of Us Just Live Here – coming Oct. 6, 2015 – and the Chaos Walking series

John Green – The Fault in Our Stars, An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska

Derek Landy – The Skulduggery Pleasant series

Jojo Moyes – One Plus One; After You (coming Sept. 29)

Hank Green – (VlogBrothers)

Rainbow Rowell – Attachments, Eleanor & Park @rainbowrowell

Brendan Reichs – The Virals series

Ally Carter – The Gallagher Girls series, All Fall Down

Margaret Stohl – The Icons series

Jenny Han – P.S. I Still Love You, Shug

Shannon Hale – The Princess Academy series; the Books of Bayern series

Siobhan Vivian – The List, The Last Boy and Girl in the World

Richelle Mead – The Bloodlines series, Soundless (coming Nov. 10)

Gayle Forman – I Was Here, If I Stay

Ransom Riggs – Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children series

Allyson Noel – The Immortals series

Holly Black – The Modern Faerie Tale series, The Spiderwick Chronicles

Tahereh Mafi – Shatter Me, Unravel Me, and Ignite Me

Marie Lu – The Legend Trilogy and The Young Elites series

Melissa de la Cruz – The Descendants series among many others

Sabaa Tahir – An Ember in the Ashes series

Leigh Bardugo – The Grisha Trilogy

Lauren DeStefano – A Curious Tale of the In-between

Pseudonymous Bosch – These book titles are secret, duh.

David Levithan – Another Day, Boy Meets Boy

Libba Bray – Lair of Dreams

Lauren Oliver – Curiosity House: The Shrunken Head

Jacqueline Woodson – Brown Girl Dreaming (Newbery Honor Book)

Alexandra Bracken – The Darkest Minds Series

IW Gregorio – None of the Above

Stacey Lee – Under a Painted Sky

Rachel Cohn – The Steps

Maureen Johnson – The Shades of London series

Laini Taylor – Dreams of Gods & Monsters

Rosamund Lupton – The Quality of Silence

David Nicholls – Us: A Novel

Louisa Young – The Heroes’ Welcome

Andersen Press – Hippospotamus, Elephants Can’t Jump, Cat & Dog, and more

Marian Keyes – The Woman Who Stole My Life

Francesca Simon – The Horrid Henry series

Jill Mansell – Falling for You

Anita Anand – Swing in the House and Other Stories

Jessie Burton – The Miniaturist

Cressida Cowell – The How to Train Your Dragon series

Anthony Horowitz – The Alex Rider series; Moriarty

Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials

John Dougherty – the Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face books

Paula Hawkins – The Girl on the Train

Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games trilogy

Egmont Press – The Ant & Bee books
Garth Nix – The Abhorsen Trilogy, The Keys to the Kingdom, Shade's Children


Latest news update comes from Publishers' Weekly, Sep. 8, but don't read the last paragraph if you haven't finished Ness' Chaos Walking series yet, because it contains a big spoiler. (For shame, PW! ;) )


Don't forget to update us if we've missed someone! Authors and publishers, we'd be happy to change or update your links or to list a different title or series. Readers, OF COURSE you can discuss the books in the comments. Please do!

The Authors, Publishers, and Readers Changing #SyrianRefugees Lives

Author Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Rest of Us Just Live Here) was watching the news as people, cities, and governments turned away Syrian refugees. He wanted to do something about it.

_{Huthaifa Shqeirat "To understand the sheer scale of the Syrian refugee situation, here's a picture of a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan."}

So Patrick Ness decided to do something. He started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for Save the Children, a respected charity, and promised to match whatever his fans and friends could raise, up to £10,000. Click here to see what happened.

The Syrian refugees and Patrick Ness had more friends than they knew. Within hours, Ness had three more authors, then Hank Green of Vlogbrothers, and then authors' organizations, publishers, bookshops, and more contributing or offering to match contributions. We gave what we could. We encouraged others. But most of all, we want you to know what a staggering difference people who create and love books can make.

As I write this, over 5700 donors have raised over £500,000.00. UK donors can ask that their government add in Gift Aid, which is kind of like a British national donation-matching program, and there are more pledges from authors, publishers, bookshops, and others to contribute matching gifts or to donate the proceeds of fundraisers they're hosting. The net in USA dollars? $954,217. Ness started this campaign Thursday, September 3. Readers like you, authors like you, concerned world people like you raised a million dollars in five days.

There's more to do. Look at that camp above. Those people need water, food, blankets, waste disposal, clothes, legal aid, jobs, new homes. It may seem like you can't possibly do enough. But you can do something. You can click here and contribute. From the child who gave her £3 in pocket money to author Philip Pullman matching £10,000 and drawing £5,000 more from his Bellacqua Charitable Trust, people are helping. Let's make it a movement. Let's show the Syrians that readers and writers and publishers and illustrators and bookshops and libraries are people and places of compassion, and that we will do what we can to see them to safety and maybe, even, real hope.

Click and pass it on: This is the link to this charitable campaign.

Meanwhile, you can do one more thing. If you're in the Iowa City area, you can call here or Uptown Bill's or  Prairie Lights or check at Iowa City Public Library - or if you're elsewhere, at your local library or on IndieBound.org or Biblio.com - great places to find books from independent bookshops - and look for books by these authors, each of whom have joined this project, and each of whom we admire and recommend....

The List of Authors Helping Patrick Ness Raise Money for Syrians - and Their Books!



(We're sure there will be more, and we'll be happy to expand this list. If we missed an author or publisher, or if you would like for us to add a link to your author or publisher homepage or recommend a particular title of yours, just drop us an email!)

Read these books. Read because when we read, we discover we are not alone. Read because when we read, we learn about other people, and we learn how to imagine their lives and homes. Read because reading teaches personal stories, useful information, important ideas, and compassion. Read because we all need to look at the world from a different angle - or another world from another angle - sometimes. Read these authors because they are showing us how to be good people in a hard time, and that makes them really special.

With thanks, love, and our best wishes and efforts to the refugees,
The Haunted Bookshop