Celebrate the season with AAUW Naperville Area friends at Hopvine Brewing in Aurora and benefit the Aunt Mary’s Storybook Project
Members and friends are invited to join AAUW Naperville Area at Hopvine Brewing Company, 4030 Fox Valley Center Dr., Aurora, Ill., on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, at 6:30 PM to mingle and support a great cause! Tickets are $30 and include hot and cold appetizers and sweet bites. A cash bar will be available.
Our party will benefit Aunt Mary’s Storybook, a project of Companions Journeying Together (https://cjtinc.org/), to help Illinois children and their incarcerated parents.
When a parent is incarcerated, a child’s whole world changes. Aunt Mary’s Storybook helps bridge that distance by recording parents and relatives reading stories, and then sending the recordings (and the books) to the children so they can hear their loved ones’ voices, feel their love, and know they are not forgotten.
So come for the festivities and fun — and bring a NEW, unwrapped book (or two) for children from newborn to 18 years old. Many Aunt Mary’s Storybook clients are African American and Hispanic families and they always need books sensitive to these cultures. They also need softcover books in addition to board books for babies and toddlers.
We encourage you to purchase books from local independent book stores. They will have good suggestions about current favorites. Some ideas:
- Dr. Seuss; Disney; Anime; Manga; Animals; Baby Shark; Questioneers; Black history; Diary of a Wimpy Kid; Good Night Moon; Goosebumps; Where the Wild Things Are; Percy Jackson; Blues Clues; Bluey; Paw Patrol; Cars/Trucks; CoCo Melon; If You Give A Mouse A Cookie; If You Give A Moose a Muffin; Lilo & Stitch; Phineas & Ferb; Minecraft
- Books about kids who have an incarcerated parent/loved one
- Books for kids on the spectrum/autism
- Spanish/bilingual for all ages. Please be sensitive about choosing books that show children of Spanish heritage.