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.

Hope.

If there is one thing that the books we deliver represent more than anything else it is hope. Week after week we ship thousands of books and soon box by box hope grows where it hadn’t existed before. Just today I dropped a box of teen fiction off at Holyoke High School in Holyoke, Massachusetts and the librarian beamed, “It’s so different here this year than last year. Now, every day after school the library is packed!”

In her face was hope.

Hope grows as those who had no books now help others build their resources:

Hi David,

Our district is having a contest for a poster publicizing Native American Literature. I am the organizing push for the emphasis on Native Literature. Your books have helped me build the most extensive Native Literature collection in our district. I am now ready to push for Native Literature across the district. Things are very hectic here. Thanks for the books you sent us this week. The new Burshak Code Talker book is just what we wanted. Students are reading all the manga and cartoon books--we can't keep them on the shelf!

All thanks to you!

Thanks for everything,

Carla Clauschee, Librarian
Navajo Pine High
Navajo, NM

Hope grows as the classrooms and the library resources become richer:

Dear David -

Just wanted to thank you AGAIN for the two large boxes of books that you sent to Memorial School this week. They were perfect for the first grade classrooms for their classroom libraries. But we put the new multicultural books in the library. The titles are fantastic and so needed in our library for use with our immigrant students. We can't thank you enough!

Gerry Moriarty, Principal
Memorial School
West Springfield, MA

And hope grows when after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina we say “you are not alone.” We will be there to help you rebuild your school library even better than before:

Dear David,

The power of the written word to escape, empower, inspire and encourage people is well known to you. However, in our community books are not so readily available. There are no book stores, or library, other than the ones in our school, in this community. Your thoughtful gift is greatly appreciated and they will be appreciated for many years by many children. Thank you so much for thinking of us.

Sincerely,

Dawn LaFont, Principal
Pointe aux Chenes Elementary
Montegut, LA

Back at the end of 2002, I remember marveling at the growth of the Reader To Reader program in its first year. We had grown from a one-person book drive that aided one school (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) into a nonprofit organization that served 35 schools, including desperately poor schools in Mississippi and Alabama. I remember wondering what the end of the following year would be like and my hope was that we could be in 100 schools. It seemed like a fantastical number that would be nearly impossible to reach. But we did. And here we are a few short years later now far past that number.

Currently, we are reaching some 240 under-resourced schools in 29 states with a free book lifeline that has proven its worth many times over. This year we not only launched our highly successful Detroit Elementary School Book Project, but we have mounted a massive Hurricane Katrina relief effort that has already collected over 70,000 children’s books.

Recently someone asked me about the future of Reader To Reader and I said I hoped to be in 1,000 schools some day. It’s a large number but one that no longer sounds unreachable. It’s a number that I believe we will not only reach but ultimately far exceed. If you tell me that some day we will look back and find that we are in 2,000 schools I won’t be surprised.

That’s my hope.

Happy holidays.

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:

Pointe aux Chenes Elementary, Montegut, LA

• Horrible Harry Goes To Sea
• Horrible Harry and the Green Slime
• Dinosaurs
• Trumpet of the Swan
• The Borrowers
• Puss in Boots
• Forever Poems for Now & Then
• 70 more

West Tallahatchie High School, Webb, MS

• Dicey’s Song
• Journal of Brian Doyle
• Children of the River
• Journey Through Space
• Words By Heart
• Daughters of Venice
• My Side of the Mountain
• 20 more

Holyoke High School, Holyoke, MA

• Tearless
• River Rats
• Lupita Manana
• The Blue Mirror
• Cubanita
• The Write Stuff
• Cortes: Conqueror of Mexico
• 20 more

Ray Brooks High School, Benoit, MS

• The Universe Explained
• Dust Tracks on a Road
• Song of the Buffalo Boy
• Ruby Bridges
• Game Face
• Olivia
• All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
• 30 more

R.D. Wilson Elementary, Waymart, PA

• Little Mouse’s Birthday Cake
• Bear Snores On
• Wolf at the Door
• Night Journey
• Across the Rolling River
• Enchanted Castle
• Some Things Are Scary
• 30 more

Navajo Pine High School, Navajo, NM

• Modern Poems
• Mau I & IICoyote Tales
• Brian’s Winter
• Bridge of Years
• Heron Cove
• 100 more

Berry Elementary, Detroit, MI

• A Family of Poems
• Everglades
• The Borrowers
• Going to School in India
• Arthur’s Honey Bees.
• Wild Ponies
• The Stray Dog
• 50 more

James Otis Elementary, E. Boston, MA

• Extraordinary Girls
• Children of Native America
• Back to School
• To Be and Artist
• The Cookie Company
• Germs on Their Fingers
• 20 more