Mackenzie Bearup, from Alpharetta, Georgia, feels crippling pain everyday. In 5th grade, she got shooting pains in her knee that “felt like a bomb was going off.” Doctors diagnosed her with reflex sympathetic dystrophy — meaning anytime something touches her knee (even the wind) she feels immense pain.

Reading was the only pain reliever that actually worked. Mackenzie began volunteering at a home for abused children and collecting books for them. She started an organization called Sheltering Books to collect books for children in homeless shelters across the USA.

Today the charity is run by both Mackenzie and her brothers, Alex and Benjamin. Alex focuses on children in the Atlanta area and Benjamin focuses on providing books to our military across the world.

Mackenzie was only 13 years old when she began collection children's books for shelters and her book drive quickly took off.  It soon became a family project with her 2 brothers working along side her.  Today they have collected and donated over 360,000 books to shelters across the world.  

Mackenzie believes that novels can turn people’s lives around. “I really think reading can do that to someone,” she says.