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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.

I can’t wait to tell you about all the wonderful work we are doing, including our massive Hurricane Katrina relief effort, but first I want to tell you about something that recently happened closer to home. I begin with a headline.

Vandals trash Atlantis school
Kathleen Durand, Herald News Staff Reporter 10/18/2005

FALL RIVER -- Atlantis Charter School is offering a $5,000 reward to anyone with information leading to the arrest of the people who broke into the building and set a fire in the school library over the weekend.

Atlantis Principal-Superintendent Fernando Goulart said the library, located in the basement of the school at 2501 S. Main St., will have to be completely rebuilt from scratch.

Goulart said the intruders stole seven of the 13 computers in the library and threw an air conditioner, books, magazines, a large papier-mâché dolphin and anything that could ignite into a pile on the floor and set the items on fire.

Goulart said fire officials told him the fire could have smoldered for hours before the smoke alarms went off.

"Fortunately it didn’t spread and nobody got hurt," he said.

He estimated that it could cost $100,000 just to replace the 10,000 books in the library. Goulart met with insurance adjusters Monday and he said they declared the library a total loss. A book fair was to have been held there this week, but it had to be canceled.

The same day this article appeared I received the following e-mail:

Dear Mr. Mazor:

I am writing you in hopes that you can help via donation to replace library materials lost to vandalism and fire at the Lower Site of the Atlantis Charter School on October 15, 2005. This site of the school accommodates 475 Readiness-K to Grade 4 students, as well as 45 faculty, staff and teaching assistants.

The Atlantis Charter School has been educating children for ten years now and has had an outstanding library prior to this tragedy. Our school was broken into and the library was set on fire after computers were taken from the facility. Water and smoke damage have left the books and teaching materials within the library with no ability to be circulated.

The materials lost are important in the outstanding education Atlantis gives to our children. We thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter.

Sincerely,

Patricia Lake, Parent Library Volunteer

The next day we sprang into action, sorting out children’s books and packing boxes. 1,800 children’s books later, 25 boxes were on their way to the Atlantis Charter School in Fall River, Mass. Hopefully, this will give them a good start in overcoming such a tragedy. As someone pointed out, it’s horrible enough to have a tragedy from something you can’t control, such as a hurricane, but when it is the result just plain maliciousness it is particularly disheartening.

Speaking of hope sprouting from the ashes of tragedy, you may remember the terrible shooting last March at Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minnesota. Student Jeff Weise, burst into Red Lake High School and shot and killed an unarmed guard, a teacher and five students before shooting himself. Twelve other students were left badly wounded. It was a tragedy reminiscent of the 1999 Columbine massacre.

In the wake of the shooting numerous stories chronicled how the Red Lake Indian Reservation had a history of violence and alcoholism. An article on the shooting in the Washington Post noted:

“In the months before he killed his kin, classmates and himself, Jeff Weise painted an utterly nihilistic -- and often eloquent – word portrait of life on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. In Internet postings, he described it as a place where people ‘chose alcohol over friendship,’ where women neglect ‘their own flesh and blood’ for relationships with men, where he could not escape ‘the grave I'm continually digging for myself.’”

In the wake of the tragedy, it was my hope to aid Red Lake High School, building their library resources and hopefully, providing some books that would give both inspiration and comfort to their students. I left a message on the voice mail of their librarian and media specialist Diane Sullivan-Huberty and received the following reply.

Dear Mr. Mazor,

We are most certainly interested in any books you may have. With many of our students being transient to other schools and towns, we lose a great many books. A few areas we lack in are: fiction teen-reading, Native American non-fiction, drawing books, hunting/outdoors/sports and social issues for reports such as teen pregnancy, drug use, etc. Our kids are always asking for David Pelzer's books: A Child Called It, The Lost Boy, or A Man Named Dave. They don't stay on the shelf more than an hour before someone checks out again!

I am the media spec. at the High School. Please contact me with what I need to do. I will go visit your website now. I was just so excited I had to get this email off to you.

THANKS!!

Diane Sullivan-Huberty, media specialist
Red Lake High School
Red Lake, MN

We immediately packed up huge box of books for Red Lake High for their first shipment and went out and purchased multiple copies of A Child Called It, The Lost Boy and A Man Named Dave.

The big box of books brought the following response:

Dear Mr. Mazor,

I wanted to let you know the books were awesome! Thanks so much! I will send a formal paper thank you soon, but it has been so crazy I barely get to the first "layer" on my desktop these days. Also, if you ever are looking for new contacts, can I give your name to our Middle School Librarian? They are also serving low income students and affected by the shooting as they were right next door, so any "boost" to the kids would be appreciated. I will wait to hear from you, though, as maybe you have limited space on your list I can share my books with them.

Diane
Red Lake HS Library
Red Lake, MN

I am pleased to report that not only will we be continuing to aid Red Lake High but we will be adding their middle school as well.

Last, but not least this month, we have been hard at work on our Hurricane Katrina Book Drive. Thanks to our team of volunteers and interns, tens of thousands of children’s books have sorted and packed. Schools in Louisiana and Mississippi that were devastated by the hurricane are already receiving boxes of new and gently used children’s books, including over 1,300 children’s books shipped to W. L. Abney Elementary in Slidell, Louisiana.

W. L. Abney Elementary is located on the north shore of Lake Ponchetrain and all of the homes in the district were either destroyed or severely flooded by the hurricane. Abney Elementary received three feet of water, destroying all their books and school supplies.

Here is a note from W. L. Abney Elementary:

October 28, 2005

Dear Mr. Mazor,

The faculty and students at Abney Elementary School in Slidell, Louisiana thank you for your generous support of our school. Your large donation of books to our school is greatly appreciated. The kindness that has been shown to us has been a boost to the spirit of our faculty and students. Thank you again for your help. Your assistance helps us return to the important task of educating our students.

Sincerely,

Jane Freeman, Principal
W. L. Abney Elementary
Slidell, Louisiana

It will be a long, multi-year process rebuilding all the school and classroom libraries devastated by Hurricane Katrina but we are in it for the long haul, and hopefully, with the help of generous donors, their resources can be even better than before.

In conclusion this month, I would like to encourage you to remember Reader To Reader, Inc. as you do your end of year tax planning. As you can see, your tax-deductible donations do a world of good, bringing hope and knowledge to those who so badly need these books.

Thank you to everyone who has given so generously to support our efforts. It wouldn’t be possible without you.

Until next month,

Sincerely,

David Mazor
Executive Director
Reader To Reader
http://www.readertoreader.org
email: dmazor@readertoreader.org

Please help us with a tax-deductible donation.

Here are some of our recent books shipments:

W.L.Abney Elementary, Slidell, LA

  • Mapping Penny's World
  • Fraction Action
  • Follow The Money
  • Clifford the Big Red Dog
  • If I Ran the Circus
  • The Edible Pyramid: Good Eating Every Day
  • Sounder
  • 1,293 more

Red Lake High School, Red Lake, MN

  • A Child Called It
  • The Lost Boy
  • A Man Named Dave
  • Chicken Soup For The Teenage Soul
  • The Hobbit
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
  • Michael Jordan Basketball’s Best
  • 100 more

Joyce Elementary, Detroit, MI

  • Forever Poems For Then & Now
  • Extraordinary Girls
  • Back To School
  • Going to School in India
  • Sharks
  • The Snowy Day
  • Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
  • 50 more

Holyoke High School, Holyoke, MA

  • Katherine
  • To Be A Slave
  • In The House Of The Spirits
  • A Child Called It
  • A Man Called Dave
  • The Lost Boy
  • Hundred Years Of Solitude
  • 60 more

Roosevelt Elementary, Compton, CA

  • Poppy
  • THE CRICKET IN TIMES SQUARE
  • The BFG
  • Dinosaurs
  • Spiders
  • Bats
  • CHARLOTTE'S WEB
  • 45 more

Pioneer Elementary, Pioneer, LA

  • Magic Bus Inside A Beehive
  • MC Higgins the Great
  • Bears
  • The Cat In The Hat
  • Black Beauty
  • Walk Two Moons
  • Mr. Popper's Penguins
  • 40 more

Pointe aux Chenes Elementary, Montegut, LA

  • One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
  • Solar System
  • Matilda
  • If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
  • Island of the Blue Dolphins
  • Kittens
  • The Foot Book
  • 40 more

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