Palmerston North book sale cancelled
Bookworms will have to wait until alert levels decrease before getting their hands on cheap second-hand books as what could be the largest book sale in New Zealand cancels its annual fair.
Palmerston North’s Red Cross Book Sale draws hundreds of people to its four-day event, selling about 70,000 books and puzzles last year from $3.
But with concerns of breaking alert level 2 guidelines to limit gathering to less than 100, organiser Jill Spicer said the sales wouldn’t be possible over Queen’s Birthday Weekend.
The sale was expected to bring in about $140,000 to boost the charity’s nest egg. With an increase in community work over the Covid-19 lockdown, the cancellation of the sale couldn’t have come at aworse time.
‘‘It’s really a tragedy because the team have 100,000 books, all sorted and boxed, a lake of A/V and amountain of jigsaws all ready to go,’’ Spicer said.
Until the sale can be resumed, Spicer was holding the books in a volunteer’s garage, but with more donations coming in it wouldn’t be long before it was over-run.
Hundreds of volunteers had been working towards the sale, putting in almost 6000 hours sorting the books, Palmerston North’s Red Cross president Don Thomas said.
But he said it would be irresponsible to hold the event under the current national crisis. The line for the sale can stretch up to 100 metres, he said, and social distancing would be impossible.
Spicer said they were considering smaller pop-up sales.