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.
Much by chance our minds have been on New Orleans
for most of August. The following emails will explain why.
August 16, 2005
Dear Mr. Mazor,
This is Alison Silber, the 11th grade English teacher
to whom you spoke on the phone this afternoon. I am writing
to your organization out of desperation.
This year, I am teaching 11th grade English to 200 students
at the inner-city, under-funded Signature High School. As you
may know, the New Orleans Public School System is currently
in horrible shape. They are 30 million dollars in debt,
completely disorganized, and their leadership turns over
every few months. My students are unfortunately the ones
who feel the ramifications of these problems most.
In our school, we currently have no books in our library,
and in my 11th grade classroom we have no books to read
as a class. My situation seems impossible; I do not know
how to close the inequality gap in education without providing
my students with class novels. My students, 100% of whom
qualify for free lunch plans, need every opportunity they
can get to move ahead in society. Our community owes
it to them to at least provide them with class books, no
less a decent facility and enough teachers, but the
New Orleans Public School System consistently fails to do so.
I am writing to you to find out if there is any way
your organization can provide my class with books. Eleventh
grade English focuses on American literature, so we
would like to have the following novels to read as a
class: 30 copies each of The Scarlet Letter, The Great
Gatsby, Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, Snow Falling
on Cedars, and any collection of Langston Hughes
poetry and essays. I teach roughly 200 students, which
averages to about 30 students per class. Class sets of
these books (30 copies) would be amazing!!
Clearly, we are grateful for anything we can get
our hands on, and will be overjoyed with anything you
can provide, even if it is not the aforementioned
novels. If you cannot provide these novels, other
American literature in particular would be wonderful.
Thank you so much for hearing my plea, and I am grateful
that an organization like yours even exists.
Gratefully,
Alison Silber
Signature High School
New Orleans, LA
August 16, 2005
Dear Alison,
We will do all we can to get you the books you are looking
for. I have emailed a potential donor and I am hopeful that
he will respond. I will also ship you this week 5 boxes of
classic literature that I think will be right for you. It will
be in addition to the books you have requested. You can expect
them in about two weeks. Please let me know how they fit
your needs. Also, send me book requests for your readers and
we will fill those too.
Hope has arrived.
Sincerely,
David Mazor
Reader To Reader, Inc.
August 17, 2005
Dave,
This is amazing!! What a wonderful e-mail to receive.
I am so grateful. The boxes you are sending sound wonderful
and I can't wait to unpack them in my classroom. I don't
know if you already sent the boxes, but I think I may
have given you the wrong zip code for my school. I am going
to e-mail you tomorrow afternoon with the correct zip code.
(I am not at school right now, and I'm hesitant to give you
the zip code again because I think I might get it wrong again.)
Please send the boxes c/o Alison Silber, Room 203. Our office
is a pretty hectic place and I don't want any packages to
get lost. I'm not sure if this is better, but you can also
send the boxes to my home address. I know the boxes will
definitely get to me there, I'm just unlikely to be at
home to receive them as I spend all day at school.
About grade levels, my students span reading levels
from grade 2 to grade 11, so we can use anything. Anything that
might be appealing content-wise to teenagers and that is at a
low reading level will also be great.
Thanks again,
Alison
August 18, 2005
Mr. Mazor,
All the books you mentioned sound wonderful. I'm very excited
to show them to my students. Today was the first day of school,
and I explained to our students that we are pretty dependant
on book donations to successfully complete our curriculum.
Thanks again,
Alison
August 16, 2005
Mr. Mazor,
Thanks so much for all your efforts. It is such a relief
to know that organizations like yours exist. A box of classic
literature sounds perfect for my students. It will probably contain
some of the first books they've seen in a long time.
Our first day of teaching is Thursday. As soon as my students
arrive and I diagnose their reading levels and interest areas,
I will send you a wish list for the top readers.
Again, thank you! Please let me know if there's anything
you'd like me to do or if there's any more information you'd
like me to send.
All my best,
Alison
August 22, 2005
Dear Alison,
No word yet from the donor I emailed about your classroom sets.
I am working hard on getting them for you and we will get
them for you. What title or titles do you need first?
In the meantime, I have some smaller sets of books if you can
make do with them. 9 copies of Sula (all brand new) for example.
Best,
David Mazor
August 22, 2005
David,
Thanks so much! I am planning on teaching The Scarlet Letter
first, then Frederick Douglass, then Gatsby, and finally I'll
teach Snow Falling on Cedars in the last quarter. About Sula,
and other like novels you have, I'd love them!
Thanks a ton,
Alison
August 24, 2005
Dear Alison,
Great news! I got them all for you. Actor John Larroquette,
star of the TV series McBride, and before that Happy Family,
The John Larroquette Show and Night Court, will be buying them
and sending them directly to you. They will probably be there
in about a week. Please let me know when they arrive.
Best,
David Mazor
August 24, 2005
David,
Oh my goodness!! I'm so thrilled, and also I am so relieved.
This is fantastic news. And today is doubly great because I
just received an announcement that your packages arrived
in our office. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
My students are writing you thank you notes, and tomorrow
I will have them write new thank you notes to Mr. Larroquette.
To which addresses should I send your notes and Mr. Larroquette's?
THANK YOU!
Alison
August 24, 2005
Dear Alison,
I'm packing up another box for you that will go out this
week. My goal is to build you a solid classroom library that
will help you overcome the fact that you don't have a school
library. Hopefully, we can get you 400-500 books at various
reading levels. It's mostly fiction but I'll put in a lot of
African-American biographies. I sent you a lot of good stuff,
including stuff that doesn't fit American Lit, such as Harry Potter
and Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but hopefully you can find
a use for it. Lots of African-American and even some African
fiction and poetry. Also, I asked Mr. Larroquette to send you
32 copies of each so you will have a couple of spares,
and I asked for a set of Langston Hughes.
Let me know your requests.
-David
Fri, August 26, 2005
David,
Thank you so much. This is truly amazing. My students
have to read one book from my classroom library by the end of
September, and yesterday they selected their books. It was such
a joy to have interesting books for them to peruse and
select. The Toni Morrison and Alice Walker books went the
quickest!!! Thanks so much for sending everything.
Your last packages hit the spot. You have a very good sense
of which books are good matches for my students. My students
loved that the books looked new, and they loved that there
was a lot of African-American literature. As it turns out,
most of my students do read above a 7th grade reading level,
so I guess we do not need too many low-level books. I suppose
my only suggestion would be to continue sending African-American
literature, and if you do have any Harry Potter books, I think
the students would enjoy them too.
Thanks so much. I'm putting the thank you notes in
the mail today. Do know we're putting together something
else for you, but it might take us a few weeks...
Thank you!
Alison
Tragically, hurricane Katrina struck on Monday, August 29,
and Signature High School is now underwater, or to be blunt,
under a toxic soup of chemicals and debris. I have no way
of knowing what the fate of the school will be and I have
been unable so far to reach Alison to make sure she is
safe and sound.
I just want to point out, amidst all the stories about
looting that have filled our eyes and ears this past week,
how much Alison’s lone voice still resonates with me. Her
words reflect hope. They glow with an enthusiasm for both
teaching and seeing her students achieve. It is a beacon that
reminds us that even in such poverty there are those who
believe that they can make a difference.
We are already busy collecting, sorting and packing boxes
that will go to schools across the Gulf coast states. We have
launched the Hurricane Katrina Book Drive in order to collect
tens of thousands of children’s books, high school level
books and textbooks to replace destroyed school and
classroom libraries in New Orleans and other hard-hit
towns in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
The damage is unprecedented and we must make an all out
effort to replace these resources. Right now, food, medicine
and shelter are of primary concern, but we must also look
towards the longer term, and the educational resources that will
need to be replaced. We are working with each state’s Department
of education to identify resource needs for all grade levels.
Some of these books will be sent to temporary schools set up
where the refugees of this disaster are housed; and some of
these will be for existing schools that have to take in
evacuees, straining their capacity.
Wherever they are needed we are ready to help.
To donate children’s books please send them to:
Hurricane Katrina Book Drive
Reader To Reader, Inc.
Cadigan Center
38 Woodside Avenue
Amherst, MA 01002
Telephone # 413-256-8595
To donate money for shipping please mail to the above address
or donate online using PayPal.
Here is some of the book shipment that went to Signature High School in New Orleans:
Beloved, Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson,
Anne of Green Gables, Middle Passage, 1984,
Cry The Beloved Country, The Red Badge of Courage,
Of Mice and Men, The Wizard of Oz, A Tale of Two Cities,
The Color Purple, Sula, The Song of Solomon, Animal Dreams,
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Coming Of Age in Mississippi,
Pay It Forward, Moby Dick, A Wrinkle In Time,
To Kill A Mockingbird, Norton Introduction To Poetry,
Redwall, Madame Bovary, The Wind In The Willows,
Lord of the Flies, A Yellow Raft In Blue Water, The Shining,
Michael Jordan Basketball’s Best, The Handmaid's Tale,
Great Mysteries of Poe, Tangerine, Lord of the Rings Trilogy,
A Day No Pigs Would Die, Native Son, Dogsong, Walden, Wuthering Heights,
Island of the Blue Dolphin, Chicken Soup For The Teenage Soul,
The Women of Brewster Place, The Joy Luck Club, Dracula,
Treasure Island, Fear Itself, The Pearl, The Sun Also Rises,
Weird And Wonderful Words, The Poisonwood Bible,
Gather Together In My Name, Grimm’s Fairy Tales,
Gulliver’s Travels, A Daughter’s Geography, Snow Falling on Cedars,
30 Days To A More Powerful Vocabulary, Bailey’s Café,
The Hobbit, Harry Potter and the Chamber Of Secrets,
Walk Two Moons, White Oleander, Writers Inc.,
Singin' and Swingin' and Getting' Merry Like Christmas,
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, Invisible Man, Bridge to Terabithia,
and many more.
Hopefully, we will have the opportunity to send them all again.
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.
