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.

It was only at the end of July that with the efforts of several volunteers we finally got our Website http://www.readertoreader.org up and running. It's been an excellent resource for people wanting to know more about our mission, but what has really surprised me is the letters that I've already started receiving from schools desperately looking for books. Remember, we are doing everything on a shoestring and have had no resources to promote our Website, but schools are so desperate for books that in searching the Internet they have discovered our site. It just shows how strong the need is.

Here are two of last month's letters.

Hello,

My name is Jennifer Stark. I am a teacher at a hard to staff school in Brooklyn, NY. I work at PS 178. It is located in a very low income neighborhood called Brownsville. 98% of our students get free lunch. Resources are stretched thin and we use our books until they fall apart. I teach Pre-Kindergarten and most of my books fall apart after a few days of sitting in my classroom library. It is always sad to me to have to put another book in my large collection of broken books. I have been unable to part with them (i.e. trash). Most of the time I try desperately to tape and restaple them only for them to be returned to me again and again. Most are beyond repair.

I was hoping to become a recipient of your Reader To Reader program. I don't know if you serve New York City but we desperately need your program here. Can you tell me how we can become a recipient?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Stark
PS 178A
Brooklyn, NY

Dear Reader To Reader:

My name is Danielle Titsworth and I am a teacher in the city of St. Louis, MO. The name of the school is Sigel Elementary; we serve 350 students including 65 ESOL and 50 Learning Disabled students. We badly need books. I came across your organization while searching for donated books. I am very interested in obtaining information regarding how to receive book donations. I would appreciate any information or assistance you may offer to our school.

Thank you,
Danielle Titsworth

The fact that these schools are emailing us highlights just how serious the lack of resources is in poor schools across the country. When a school asks "How do we join?" The answer is "You are already joined. What do you need?" We then ship out their first batch of books the very same day. I am pleased to report that last month alone we shipped over 600 children's books to PS 178 in Brooklyn and over 350 children's books to Sigel Elementary in St. Louis.

While we are discussing needs, I would like to mention the most critical need we face is for up to date science related books. Not textbooks, but books on everything from chemistry, physics, nature, biology and all other areas of science. Many of the schools we serve have no current science books at all.

Here are highlights of just some of our recent book shipments:

N. Panola High School, Sardis, MS

• Word Origins
• The Ice Man Cometh
• Cold Mountain
• The Forest
• Road to the NFL
• Medicine River
• Mini Mysteries
• Over 40 other books

Jefferson County High School, Fayette, MS

• Moll Flanders
• Battle Cry of Freedom
• The Blues Eyes
• The Rainmaker
• Lord Jim
• The Perfect Lie
• Far From the Madding Crowd
• Over 60 other books

Louisville High School, Louisville, MS

• Dictionary of American History (10 volumes)
• Chimpanzees of Gombi
• Spanish At a Glance
• The Federalist Papers
• Now Sheba Sings the Song
• The World Inside
• Over 40 other books

Navajo Pine High School, Navajo, NM

• Lakota Woman
• Mythology of South America
• A Brief History of Time
• Crazy Horse
• Flight
• Stars & Planets
• The Robots of Dawn
• The Lives of a Cell
• River Runners
• Frozen Fire
• Over 100 more books

Durant High School, Durant, MS

• Gases
• New Dictionary of American History
• Art of the Ages (4 volumes)
• Illustrated World of Thoreau
• Immortal Poems
• Illustrated History of Science Fiction
• Sounder
• Evolution of Life
• April Morning
• Over 60 more books

MS Palmer, Marks, MS

• Frankenstein
• Dictionary of Word Origins
• Reptiles of the World
• A Perfect Spy
• Thomas Jefferson and His Many Talents
• The Awakening
• Families of Birds
• How Does a Poem Mean
• ABC of the Human Body
• American Colonies
• Over 80 more books

Wyoming Indian High School, Ethete, WY

• Chess Traps
• Born to Coach
• The Hobbit
• Winning Sounds Like This
• The Journey Home
• In The Girls Hope Is A Muscle
• Flight
• Over 40 more books

Dillard University, New Orleans, LA

• The Trials of Anthony Burns
• Lysias: Selected Speeches
• Bebop! The Music and the Players
• The Ecological Vision
• Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
• News of a Kidnapping
• The History of Statistics
• Ford Madox Ford
• The Darker Face of the Earth
• Over 30 more books

Tohono O'Odham Community College, Sells, AZ

• Outerbridge Reach
• The Lost Universe
• Desalination
• Living Water,
• One Woman's Attic
• A Bird in the House
• Language & Art in the Navajo Universe
• 20 other books

Bridge Academy, Springfield, MA

• Lord of the Flies
• Ahab's Wife
• Dutchman & the Slave
• The Beet Queen
• Invisible Man
• Framing the Constitution of the United States
• Cold Sassy Tree
• Colonies In Space
• The Ascent of Man
• Treasury of American Folklore
• Visual Dialogue
• Over 80 more books

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. We've shipped much more.

Special thanks to June Turcotte for volunteering her time to collect, organize and box up books. Special thanks to all the wonderful, energetic, Amherst College students who helped sort books on their Community Service Day. You were fantastic! And special thanks to actor John Larroquette, who in addition to a generous financial contribution, mailed 17 brand new copies of John Steinbeck's The Pearl to Louisville High School in Louisville, Mississippi. Thanks John! We'll all watch your new show, Happy Family!

Until next month,

Sincerely,

David Mazor
Reader To Reader

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