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 want to welcome renowned children's author Norton Juster, whose works include The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line, to Reader To Reader's advisory board.

"Reader To Reader is such a simple idea and such a farsighted one - provide books for students of all ages who don't have them. I can't think of a worthier endeavor or one that will have a more profound effect," notes Juster.

We are honored to have such a noted author as Norton Juster lending his support to our organization. We are grateful for both the financial donation he has made and his efforts in helping us get the word out to other children's authors about the vital work we do. We couldn't be more pleased that he has committed his time to our organization and we thank him for his generous spirit.

Speaking of generosity of spirit, I must tell you about the outstanding efforts of 12-year-old Alex Engel, who organized a children's book drive that has netted two thousand children's books (and still growing) to benefit the inner-city elementary schools in Compton, California. People may remember Compton from last year's news of the tragic murder of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams' sister in a street shooting.

Here is Alex's story in his own words.

"I'm a 12-year-old boy in 6th grade. I live in West Los Angeles and attend Palms Middle School. I started collecting children's books for Reader to Reader in preparation for my bar mitzvah. My temple requires that each mitzvah candidate perform a "mitzvah project" (project for charity). I think it's very important to give back something to the community and the world - in Judaism, we call this "Tikkun Olam", which means "repair the world, through social justice." So I have been doing "mitzvahs" for several years. I volunteer at my Temple to help teachers and younger children in classes. I like helping in the Israeli dance class best of all. I volunteer to work in the school library at my middle school at least two or three days per week. Before that, I did community projects with my cub scout pack - cleaning beaches, planting trees in parks, restoring native plants in wetlands, visiting elderly. I also reserve 20% of my allowance for "tzedakah" (charity).

For my mitzvah project, I chose a book donation project because my mom is a librarian and we have always loved books. We knew that lots of people have books they have read and don't need any longer. We had the idea of asking people to donate books to needy children, but we did not know how to make arrangements to do that. My dad helped me find organizations that would take donations of books. We found Reader To Reader, which gives books to underprivileged school libraries. Reader To Reader was very helpful, because they could help us donate the books to schools near where we live, so we would not have to ship the books we collected. Reader To Reader helped us arrange to deliver children's books to elementary schools in Compton, which is part of Los Angeles.

The first thing I had to do to make my project happen was that I had to ask the principals of Palms Middle School, Westwood Charter Elementary School, and the religious school at Temple Isaiah, permission to collect books at the schools. I made collection boxes for each location. I made posters to get attention for the book drive, and I made fliers for the students to inform their parents about the book drive.

It didn't take long for the books to start coming in - we got several boxes donated within the first week. I picked up the books at my school, and my parents picked up the books at the other locations. Then my parents and I had to pick up the books and "weed out" all the ones that were not in good enough condition to donate to libraries. Now we are getting the books ready to deliver to the Compton schools. We have 18 boxes full of books right now, and we haven't stopped collecting books yet. We'll also ask people who come to my bar mitzvah to bring children's books to donate to the schools in the fall.

I am glad that Reader to Reader helped me do this project. I feel proud because I'm helping the world, and glad to be helping other children. Kids and adults can do this project, in my opinion, as long as there are at least three people in a group because it is easier to do this project with a group. I think that others would enjoy this project and I encourage them to do it."

--Alex Engel

Wow! Now that is incredible. Alex and his father recently delivered 593 children's books to Roosevelt Elementary and 560 children's books to Kelly Elementary, with more to be delivered this fall. We couldn't be more grateful for all their hard work, or more proud of Alex's commitment to making a difference in the lives of poor children. He is truly an amazing young man.

Lastly this month, I am pleased to announce that Reader To Reader has been awarded a $3,000 grant from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation to support our work in bringing books to under-resourced schools in rural Maine. Author Stephen King, whose best-selling novels include The Shining, Carrie, and Salem's Lot, has long been a supporter of initiatives that promote strengthening and supporting communities in his native Maine.

This grant will be used to fund the first year of our Maine Book Project, which aids poor rural public schools in Caswell, Cutler, Fort Fairfield, Lubec, Limestone, and Van Buren, Maine. These schools are in desperate need of books and with this grant we will be able to supply hundreds of books to each school to renew and replenish their school libraries. We are very grateful to the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation for making the Maine Book Project possible.

Thank you for reading this newsletter and we thank you for your support.

Until next month,

Sincerely,
David Mazor
Reader To Reader
http://www.readertoreader.org
email: dmazor@readertoreader.org

Please help us with a tax-deductible donation.

Here are just a few of our recent book shipments:

Huston-Tillotson College, Austin, TX

• Exit to Freedom
• A Murder in Virginia
• Lines That Divide
• Living Next Door to the Death House
• The Innocents
• It's All The Rage
• 5 more

Sigel Elementary, St. Louis, MO

• Spiders
• Addy's Surprise
• Meet Molly
• The Rescuers Down Under
• Acid Rain
• Martin Luthor King
• Armed With Courage
• Be My Friend
• 60 more

Hagerman Elementary, Hagerman, ID

• 101 Things You Should Know
• Old Yeller
• Not Now Said The Cow
• Peaceable Kingdom
• Apple
• Snowflakes & Bellyaches
• 40 more

Port Gibson High School, Port Gibson, MS

• 1984
• Complete Poems of Robert Frost
• Souls of Black Folk
• Tally's Corner
• Profiles In Courage
• The Time Machine
• Of Mice and Men
• 45 more

Springfield Academy, Springfield, MA

• The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau (20 vol.)
• Our Magnificent Wildlife
• The Education Of Little Tree
• 100 more

JJ McClain High School, Lexington, MS

• The French Impressionists and Their Century
• Life Goes To War
• Poems of Robert Browning
• The #1 Ladies Detective Agency
• Brave New World
• Titan
• Lenegrin
• The Battle of Zama
• The Viking Book of Poetry
• 60 more

Holyoke Alternative Program, Holyoke, MA

• Mythology
• The Double Helix
• Love Medicine
• Woman in the Mists
• Real Life at the White House
• 10 Short Plays
• The Shining
• 120 more

Bethune-Cookman College, Daytona Beach, FL

• Racism On Trial
• Bird Lives
• Botany of Desire
• Correspondence of W.E.B. Dubois (3 volumes)
• Freedom Walk
• Protecting America's Health: The FDA, Business and One Hundred Years of Regulation
• 10 more

And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

To be added to this newsletter please email dmazor@readertoreader.org