Dear Friend of Reader To Reader,

I hope you enjoy this newsletter about the Reader To Reader Book Project. Our success is very much due to your donations of books, postage money, and most of all your generous spirit. Please forward this newsletter and help us spread the word.

This month I would like to share with you a recent letter I received from the Navajo Pine High School in Navajo, New Mexico.

Dear David Mazor:

I would like to thank you and your program, Reader To Reader, for the wonderful book shipments you have sent to our high school library at Navajo Pine High School.

Navajo Pine High School is located in "red rock" country about 60 miles from the nearest town with a bookstore, Gallup, New Mexico. Our students are 99% Navajo. The town of Navajo was created in the sixties, when the tribe developed Navajo Forestry Products, Co. The small town consists of an abandoned pulp mill, gas station, and school. Fifty percent of Navajo residents live below the poverty level, making less than $10,000 a year. The students at the high school receive 96% free school lunch. Seventy percent of the Navajo reservation has no water; our families can travel up to 70 miles just to haul water. Fifty percent of the homes on the reservation have no electricity. No electricity translates into no computers and no Internet, a huge digital divide. Books and other print material remain the only source of information for our students. This is why David Mazor’s Reader To Reader service is so important to our school.

The library has an obligation to give each student at Navajo Pine the best and most reliable information. Since there is no Internet at Navajo, the library’s role is even more important to our small town. Each year we have about a $400 book budget&mash;this means we can afford to buy about 15 to 20 new books a year for our 200 students. Our library is consistently trying to update its collection and offer the latest information to support each teacher’s curriculum. David Mazor has helped us fill our collection needs in the areas of music, science, science fiction, general fiction, science, poetry, and reference. He has sent many more books to us in the past month than we would have been able to buy in a year.

Again, I would like to thank Mr. Mazor and encourage his Reader To Reader program—a book has tremendous power.

Thank you.

Carla Clauschee

Librarian, Navajo Pine High School

Navajo, New Mexico

Here is another note from Ms. Clauschee at Navajo Pine High School.

We have the greatest interest in all Native American books. Our students love to learn about other tribes. Sherman Alexie is number one. We have not had the money to buy even one of his books. His movie Smoke Signals was just shown here. If you saw Smoke Signals it really describes the Rez life. We want anything Native or Ancient Mesoamerican. It is wonderful to hear that more books are on the way.

If you would like to help build the Navajos collection, please contact me for special shipping instructions at dmazor@readertoreader.org.

Here are just some of last week’s other book shipments:

Eudora High School, Eudora, Arkansas

• American Heritage Series (30 volumes)
• 50 sci-fi novels
• 15 books on tape
• 3 hardback dictionaries
• The Compton Encyclopedia (27 volumes)
• 8 art books, including Ansel Adams, Art Treasures of Russia, and Art Treasures of Europe
• 20 assorted African-American literature
• 16 assorted science books, including astronomy
• 2-volume American Heritage series
• 40 mystery novels

Davidson High School, Davidson, Mississippi

• 10 astronomy books
• 80 assorted fiction
• 5 natural history books
• Rome and Her Empire
• World Famous Paintings
• The Ascent of Man
• Civilization
• 3 chess books
• 30 assorted history
• 50 assorted fiction
• The Norton Shakespeare (2 volumes)
• History of Impressionism
• History of Post-Impressionism
• Beethoven Reader
• 10 Greek Plays
• The Story of Art

Desire Street Academy, New Orleans, Louisiana

• Encyclopedia of Science & Invention (36 volumes)
• 100 children’s books
• 55 sci-fi novels
• 30 mysteries

Marvell High School, Marvell, Arkansas

• Growing Up With Science (26 volumes)
• 30 children’s books
• 75 popular fiction
• Time/Life Science Series (18 volumes)
• 20 classics
• Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom (15 volumes)
• 4 American Heritage Dictionaries
• 30 thrillers and assorted fiction

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, Massachusetts

• With last week’s shipment of 150 books we have now passed over 3,500 books donated to the college since October 2002.

Special thanks to Corina “Corky” Lopez and June Turcotte for volunteering their time to collect, organize and box up books.

Until next month,

Sincerely,

David Mazor

Reader To Reader

To be added to this newsletter please email dmazor@readertoreader.org