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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. Even during summertime we are shipping lots of books to schools and helping them boost their resources for when the students come back in the fall. Here’s a note we received from J. J. McClain High School in Lexington, Mississippi.
We have not only been using these long hot summer days to ship lots of books, but also to set the stage for our latest statewide book project, which will expand our work in Louisiana. Schools are just now opening in Louisiana and Reader To Reader will be there this year to make the school libraries in New Orleans, Monroe, Lake Providence, Saint Joseph, and Tallulah stronger. In all, our new Louisiana Book Project will serve 6,000 students at 15 schools that all have a desperate need for books. How desperate? In 1997, Time Magazine labeled Lake Providence as "The Poorest Place in America." Reporter Jack E. White noted, "The town has no public parks or swimming pools, no movie theaters, no shopping malls, not even a McDonald's or a Wal-Mart. In fact, business in Lake Providence, Louisiana, is so bad that even the pawnshop has shut down." White went on to write that "Restless teenagers mill around narrow streets lined with burned-out houses and dilapidated trailer parks." This is where Reader To Reader is so desperately needed and if we can help in getting just one of Lake Providence's children into college and out of poverty, we will have done our job. Hopefully, we can do much more than that. At this time, no grants have been received to fund The Louisiana Book Project and the launch is being funded out of our current resources. I have always believed in the "build it and they will come" philosophy because if you wait around to raise all the donations and grants needed to fund a project, not only will the problem be twice as bad when you finally get to it, but your energy will probably have run out before the project even launches. With that in mind, here we go! If you would like to help fund the Louisiana Book Project, please send your tax-deductible donation to:
Reader To Reader, Inc.
Cadigan Center Or donate online via PayPal. The growth of Reader To Reader over the past two years has been nothing short of phenomenal, and with the launch of the Louisiana Book Project it brings the total number of schools we now aid to over 100 schools in 18 states. Sometimes even I wonder where all the books will come from to aid all these schools, and then fortuitous events seem to blow good fortune our way. Just last week I received an email asking whether we could use 500 brand new copies of "Michael Jordan Basketball's Best" by Chip Lovitt. Could we ever? You bet! There are few subjects more popular at all grade levels, and few books harder for us to come by, than books on basketball. From the Navajo reservation to inner-city schools in New York and L.A., basketball-related books are always at the top of their lists, and now we have a wonderful new resource to send them. Speaking of basketball, this month I would like to welcome Paul Lambert to the Reader To Reader Advisory Board. Paul is the Vice President of Guest Experience & Programming at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. Paul was instrumental in putting together our very successful Hall of Fame Book Drive last March. With Paul's help we look forward to this becoming an annual event. And one more note on where all the books come from. While the vast majority of our books come from the generosity of individual donors, I would like to mention the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial's generous donation to us. Each year the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial in Washington, DC awards the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award to the book which "most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes – his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity". The RFK Book Awards have received international recognition as one of the most prestigious honors an author can achieve. What does that have to do with Reader To Reader? The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial donated numerous copies of the wide range of books under consideration for this year's book award. This wonderful supply of books on various human rights-related issues, including Exit to Freedom, A Murder in Virginia, Lines That Divide, and Living Next Door to the Death House, has provided us with a rich resource of recently published college level books. Our thanks to the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial for their outstanding contribution to our book program. By the way, who won this year's award? Scott Turow's Ultimate Punishment was the winner of the 2004 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Special recognition was given to Mamie Till-Mobley (posthumous) and Christopher Benson for Death of Innocence. Selected from a field of over 80 nominees, these books represent the issues that were of paramount concern to Robert Kennedy. That's all for now. Until next month,
Sincerely, Please help us with a tax-deductible donation. Here are just a few of our recent book shipments: William McKinley High School, Boston, MA
Amelia Johnson High School, Thomaston, AL
Hagerman Elementary, Hagerman, ID
Sigel Elementary School, St. Louis, MO
Springfield Academy, Springfield, MA
Port Gibson High School, Port Gibson, MS
Navajo Pine High School, Navajo, NM
Dillard University, New Orleans, LA
And that's just the tip of the iceberg! To be added to this newsletter please email dmazor@readertoreader.org |