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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.

Our Maine Book Project is expanding! It has now grown to eleven schools in all with the addition last month of Calais High School in Calais, Eagle Lake Elementary/Junior High in Eagle Lake, New Sweden Consolidated School in New Sweden, Rockwood Elementary School in Rockwood Twp, and Woodland Consolidated School in Woodland, Maine.

Here is a note from the Woodland Consolidated School:

Dear Mr. Mazor:

Our school received the first shipment of books from the Reader To Reader book program. Our school is very excited be a part of this program. Being a low income community and also hard hit by the new school funding formula, we would not be able to afford these books. Our school feels that reading is extremely important in order for a student to succeed in today's world. With the Reader To Reader program we will be able to get more books into the hands of students. With more books in the hands of students, I am sure our test scores will show positive results.

Thanks for allowing our school to be part of your program.

Sincerely,

Philip Caverhill
Principal
Woodland Consolidated School
Woodland, Maine

Last month we added Easthampton High School in Easthampton, MA. Easthampton is a working class town with a tight budget and this year their library only received $300 for book acquisitions for the entire year. Needless to say, we were able to bring them more than that with our very first delivery and we have been delivering books on a weekly basis to give their library a boost. I must tell you about our first delivery which I brought over myself. It was like a party. The students gathered around as the box was unpacked, calling out their "dibs" on who would get to read a book first. The enthusiasm was incredible. By our second delivery it was like we were old friends. You should have seen the students light up when they saw it was another box from Reader To Reader.

Here is a letter we just received from them:

Dear Mr. Mazor,

I cannot begin to express the level of gratitude felt by myself, the staff, and especially the students at Easthampton High School. The books you sent us provide renewed hope for our library program.

The Easthampton High School was built in the late 1960's and at the time was considered a "state of the art" school complete with an updated library media center and collection of books. Today the majority of that collection remains on the shelves in addition to the selections deemed appropriate from the previous school's collection. As a result, the average age of the books on the shelves is 40 years old.

The role of today's school library or information center is to support the mission and curriculum of the school by providing our student's with up to date, accurate, varied material which meets the developmental, cultural and learning needs of all students. To accomplish this task the libraries book collection must constantly be updated, a daunting task in today's economic environment.

There is currently no money available in the budget for me to purchase current editions of books that have been eliminated, including contemporary young adult fiction. Reader To Reader's donations of current young adult literature will enhance our student's ability to read for pleasure, which studies have shown increases overall test scores and educational performance.

Reader To Reader has also provided us with newer versions of the classics. My copies were copyright dated from the 1940's-1960. They were yellowed, torn, and unattractive to today's teenage reader. By providing students a book with an updated cover and crisp new pages, this book now becomes more enticing to the reader, and will make a huge difference to reluctant readers.

I look forward to a continued relationship with Reader To Reader as we work in cooperation to enhance my library's collection and better serve the students at Easthampton High School.

Sincerely,

Robin Rowe
Library Teacher
Easthampton High School
Easthampton, MA

In other news, We are excitedly awaiting a report back from our first two schools in Alaska; Davis-Ramoth School in Selawik and Mountain View Elementary in Anchorage. It takes over three weeks for a box of books mailed library rate to make it up there, so hopefully we'll have some word for you next month.

Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge artist Richard Prince and screenwriter John Logan (who is Oscar nominated for The Aviator) for their generous donations. They are truly helping Reader To Reader expand our work!

That's all for now.

Until next month,

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:

Abbey Kelly Foster School, Worcester, MA

  • Curious George
  • Green Eggs & Ham
  • The Foot Book
  • Louis Pasteur
  • Rupert the Rhinoceros
  • Great Women Teachers
  • Racing the Sun
  • 65 more

South Delta High School, Rolling Fork, MS

  • The Slave Dancer
  • Voices Louder Than Words
  • Eight American Poets
  • Everest: 50 Years of Struggle to Reach the Top of the World
  • Peterson First Guide Astronomy
  • Remember Me
  • New Treasures of the Past
  • 20 more

Sunshine High School, Newbern, AL

  • Troy
  • The Grey King
  • Wilma: The Wilma Rudolph Story
  • Great Black Heroes
  • 100 Things You Should Know About Oceans
  • Jansen's History of Art
  • Seeing Earth From Space
  • 50 more

SV Marshall High School, Lexington, MS

  • Michelangelo
  • Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution
  • Full Court Press
  • Mystery of the Blue Train
  • Greatest Works of Art
  • The Painted House
  • Nine Stories
  • 20 more

Jefferson High School, Portland, OR

  • The Spirit of the Whale
  • Cats
  • The Right of Taking Fish
  • Chaos to Cosmos
  • Why Does the Coqui Sing?
  • Stories of Eva Luna
  • African Kingdoms
  • 20 more

Durant High School, Durant, MS

  • The Haunting of Hip Hop
  • Lucy
  • Sula
  • Ansel Adams
  • The Delaney Sister's
  • Book of Wisdom
  • Monsieur Se Saint-George
  • 30 more

Navajo Pine High School, Navajo, NM

  • Desert Voices
  • Tales From Shakespeare
  • Babbit
  • Black Elk Speaks
  • The Crucible
  • The Red Badge of Courage
  • The Great Gatsby
  • 95 more

Putnam Technical High School, Springfield, MA

  • The Luckiest Girl
  • Juniper
  • Dinosaurs
  • The House On Mango Street
  • Scotland
  • Exploring Other Worlds
  • First Crossing
  • 30 more

And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

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