I was contacted by Becky from Reader with a Capital R about this phenomenal project she is working on, A Dry Read: New Books For Nashville. When Nashville was flooded in early May, residents lost everything, including their cherished books. Becky is working hard to collect books to replace those that were lost. What an admirable project! I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to promote this effort, very deserving of publicity and attention!
Becky has decided to donate all books received from A Dry Read to the Pencil Foundation, an organization that provides a lot of materials to the educational community in Nashville. The Foundation lost over 2,000 books in the flood. That sort of loss just breaks my heart! The Foundation is planning on holding a book fair in October for the teachers of Nashville. At last year’s book fair, they gave away more than 6,000 books in one day. Each teacher was allowed to take 30 books; more than 200 teachers showed up on their day off to carefully choose books their very needy students would love.
How can you help? Following is a list of items needed for the 2010 book fair:
1) Books: children’s books: board books, pre-school books, flap books, activity (coloring, sticker) books, picture books, young readers, beginning readers, children’s and young adult chapter books, and high school materials. Their most pressing needs are for books struggling readers at the elementary and middle school level can enjoy. High interest non-fiction books are as welcome as fiction. Many students are reading below grade level or are English Language Learners. Books in Spanish would also be greatly welcome. New or used books are great.
2) Plastic storage bins and shelving. Again, one reason they lost so much was that their books were stored in cardboard boxes on the floor. Waterproofing their storage would have helped a lot.
3) Volunteers. As books come in and when the book fair itself approaches, Pencil Foundation will need man power to carry, sort, display, and distribute books. Anyone who wants to go ahead and volunteer can go to the Pencil website section on volunteering.
Your donation is the media mail rate of the postage to send in your books. Please send them to:
LP PENCIL Box at McCann ALC
1300 56th Ave North
Nashville, TN 37209
I know exactly what I’m doing with all my excess books from now on!
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