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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. First off, I want to update everyone on Alison Silber, the intrepid New Orleans high school teacher who was working very hard at gathering resources for her eleventh grade American Literature students just before Hurricane Katrina hit. Alison is safe and sound, but sadly she lost the home she was living in and her car. As for Signature High School, the school was flooded with nine feet of water and toxic chemicals and is not expected to reopen before next fall. Alison may be fine but she is very concerned because she has not been able to learn the whereabouts of any of her students. She also hopes to return to teaching by the spring, probably in Baton Rouge. She has found temporary work doing relief work. I will keep you up to date about her whereabouts and we have promised to provide her with all the books she and her new school need wherever she ends up. Our own Katrina relief efforts have been keeping us busy seven days a week. Bigger, Bigger, Biggest! Is the only way to describe it. We are hard at work on our Hurricane Katrina Book Drive, which is national in scope. Books have been pouring in from all over the country and we are hoping to ship as many as 200,000 new and gently used children’s books and thousands of textbooks to rebuild the school libraries destroyed by the hurricane. I am simply amazed at the generous spirit of so many different individuals and groups. We have received boxes of books from as far away as Colorado, Texas, California and Washington state. Among the various groups organizing book drives include a Girl Scout troop in San Diego, a school system in North Carolina, and the 47,000 members of American Mensa. We even received a package of books from the staff of Mad Magazine. Recently, two energetic mothers from Floral Park, Long Island, drove up with 3,000 children’s books collected by their children. The kids held a six-hour book drive that only ended when they ran out of space in the family van. Local schools in the Pioneer Valley, including Amherst, Granby and Deerfield, have all started their own Reader to Reader book drives, and in Springfield over 800 high school Kiwanis Key Club members are aiming to collect 60,000 children’s books. I bet they will. As for where the books will go, we have been working closely with the Department of Education in both Mississippi and Louisiana to coordinate the delivery of this mountain of books, and if you are wondering how we are getting the books down south, Bekins Van Lines and Weymouth-based McKee’s Moving and Storage Will play a major role as they are generously offering to ship Many of the boxes free of charge. This is a huge donation that will save us thousands of dollars in shipping costs. While we gather up the hundreds of boxes that will be delivered by Bekins Van Lines, we also are already mailing boxes to hurricane damaged schools. We have already sent out shipments to: D'Iberville Middle School, D'Iberville, MS; Florida Avenue Elementary, Slidell, LA; Abney Elementary, Slidell, LA; Cypress Cove Elementary, Slidell, LA; Grand Caillou Elementary, Dulac, LA; Pointe aux Chenes Elementary, Montegut, LA; and Little Caillou School, Chauvin, LA. Amazingly, even with all the hurricane relief work we are doing, we are also able to keep up on our all our other work serving over 220 school in 28 states. Don’t ask me how we do it, well actually you can, it’s through the efforts of all our great volunteers. Here’s a note we just received from Jefferson High School in Portland, OR.
If you did not get to hear last month’s Reader To Reader interview on the Marketplace Morning Report you can listen to it via your computer by going to http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2005/09/07/AM200509075.html 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 Please help us with a tax-deductible donation. Here are some of our recent books shipments: Grand Caillou Elementary, Dulac, LA
John Essex School, Demopolis, AL
Dickenson West Elementary, Hamtramck, MI
William Peck Middle School, Holyoke, MA
Carver Elementary, Los Angeles, CA
James Otis Elementary, E. Boston, MA
New Sweden Elementary, New Sweden, ME
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