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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.

The Hurricane Katrina Book Drive, what an exciting, tiring, and ultimately mammoth undertaking it is. It has brought together the generous donations from many thousands of books donors across the country, and the energy of hundreds of volunteers, who have collected, sorted, and helped ship over 300,000 books. We have received books from as far away as San Diego and San Francisco. Each box is carefully sorted so that books of similar grade levels are packed together and any worn out books are discarded. Then the boxes are labeled with the grade level and shipped to help rebuild the library and classroom resources of a hurricane devastated school.

What is the impact we are a having? Here is some feedback:

Dear Mr. Mazor

On behalf of the students, teachers, and staff of the Jones County School District, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the outpouring of generosity you have shown our district with the book donation. We appreciate all you have done to provide books, coordinate efforts, and provide transportation for this enormous endeavor.

You cannot know how many people you have touched by the mountain of books you sent. Librarians and teachers got first invitations to select materials, and then we opened it up to all district employees. The local community college sent representatives to select adult fiction for their libraries, since fiction budgets have been greatly reduced. After that we invited hospital workers, Red Cross workers, and firemen to select books.

I am corresponding with communities on the gulf coast to send books to them as soon as they have storage for them.

We appreciate all your tireless efforts in this book drive and donation project.

Thank you for your continued efforts to send books to Jones County, Mississippi.

Sincerely,

Deborah Meador
Coordinator of Community Involvement and School Improvement
Jones County School
Ellisville, Mississippi

We’re not done! The Hurricane Katrina Book Drive continues! Please send us your books in good condition and your donations of funds to help offset the shipping costs.

In other news, May is a busy month for us as so many libraries have library sales and we go in after the sales and pick up many of the remainders. We went to two different sales this past weekend and came back with two van loads of books. Often these books are in like-new condition. We are so glad we can give them a new home where they are desperately needed, such as on the bare shelves of the new Navajo Community Library, a small public library on the Navajo Reservation. It is a library that is so necessary because many of the homes on the reservation have no books. We have already shipped hundreds of books to fill their shelves and we will be packing many more.

Here is a word from their librarian:

Dear David,

Please thank everybody who is contributing these wonderful books. They are in much better shape than anything we have here. They are just like new. The children’s picture books are so wonderful, and thank you also for all the suspense and mystery novels. I am busy getting these out on the shelves and I can’t wait for your next boxes to arrive!

Sincerely,

Joleen Poyer
Navajo Community Library
Navajo, New Mexico

Lastly, we are also busy readying our list of schools that will get summer books shipments. We work all year round. I will have more on the summer shipments next month.

That's all for now.

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:

Joyce Elementary, Detroit, MI

  • Traffic Jamboree
  • Elmer in the Snow
  • Very Friendly Firefly
  • Little Red Cap
  • Otto Goes to the Beach
  • Tell Me What’s Like To Be Big
  • Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales
  • 40 more

Lubec Consolidated, Lubec, ME

  • Joan of Arc
  • Thief of Time
  • Ruby Holler
  • In My Father’s House
  • The Grand Escape
  • Forever Amber Brown
  • Number the Stars
  • 30 more

Lake Providence High, Lake Providence, LA

  • Lewis & Clark
  • Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
  • Thomas Edison
  • The Wright Brothers
  • Reptiles and Amphibians
  • Johnny Tremain
  • I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
  • 30 more

PS 178, Brooklyn, NY

  • Over in the Garden
  • Mouse Paint
  • If Sea Cows Give Milk
  • Chicken Sunday
  • The Snowman
  • This is our Earth
  • When The Fly Flew In
  • 60 more

Shaw High, Shaw, MS

  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • The Key to the Golden Firebird
  • Tangerine
  • The Boggart
  • A Plague of Angels
  • Holes
  • Silent Thunder
  • 30 more

Ray Brooks High, Benoit, MS

  • The First Day of Winter
  • Earthquakes
  • The Great Gatsby
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin
  • Redwall
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Tuck Everlasting
  • 40 more

Grand Caillou Elementary, Houma, LA

  • Tell Me a Story
  • Peter Pan
  • Danny and the Dinosaur
  • Soccer Sam
  • Arthur’s Birthday
  • Frog Medicine
  • Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
  • 100 more

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