Time for School!

On Monday the Reader To Reader’s Navajo Mentoring Program team arrived at Navajo Pine High School in Navajo, New Mexico.

The team is spending the week working with the students on a wide range of issues including helping them understand the process of choosing a college, and how the career paths they seek are connected to their educational choices.

Reader To Reader has a long history with Navajo Pine High, having donated over 7,000 books over the past seven years to their library and classrooms, and in 2007 we launched the online book discussion and mentoring components of the Navajo Mentoring Program at the school.

Now it's time to get started!

Touring Dine College

Reader To Reader’s Navajo Mentoring Program team tours Dine College in Tsaile, AZ.

Dine College is the primary higher education institution located on the Navajo reservation. Dine is a two-year college that helps Navajo students build their skills so they can transfer to four year colleges and universities such as the University of Arizona and the University of New Mexico.

Interestingly, many students take three to five years to get their two year degree due to their work schedules, the amount of remedial work they may need, and their family obligations. Students range from recent high school graduates to 65-years-old.

Ed Curtis of Dine College detailed the educational opportunities for Dine students. The school graduates over 200 students a year with associate degrees.

In addition to the main campus, the college has eight satellite sites spanning the 27,000 square mile reservation.

Over the past five years Reader To Reader has donated hundreds of new books to the Dine library and over $20,000 worth of brand new mathematics textbooks.

Kyle Clark Honored as Outstanding Mentoring Program Student

Reader To Reader’s Navajo Mentoring Program team stopped at La Cueva High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico to present an award to high school junior Kyle Clark for his work in the Navajo Mentoring Program.

Kyle was selected as the top student for his outstanding dedication which helped him
make the most reading level advancement of any student in the program.

In addition to receiving a plaque honoring his achievement, Clark will be taking an all expense paid trip this October to Amherst College, where he will spend a week learning first hand about the college experience and the host of careers made possible by a college education.

He will meet Pulitzer Prize winning authors, artists, writers, scientists, and visit numerous cultural and historical attractions, robotics labs, museums, and much more.

Kyle will also work with the Program’s college reading mentors and sample some of their classes.

Everyone at Reader To Reader congratulates Kyle on his achievement.

(Pictured are Kyle Clark and Reader To Reader executive director David Mazor, and Kyle and his sister and aunt with the mentoring team.

Reader To Reader Heads to the Navajo Reservation

A team of nine Reader To Reader staff, Amherst college student reading mentors and a Amherst college professor of literature are heading to the Navajo reservation in Arizona and New Mexico.

The team is part of Reader To Reader's Navajo Mentoring Program. The group will spend a week working with Navajo high school and elementary school students, leading book discussions, talking about college life and the whys and hows of attending college.

A key part of the trip is cultural exchange and knowledge building, and the reading mentors stopped to explore Pueblo Bonita at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

The mentors are spending three days touring various historical and cultural sites in advance of their work in schools on Monday.

Thank You from New Heights Academy Charter School

Dear Mr. Mazor,

On behalf of the entire New Heights Academy Charter School family, I would like to thank you for Reader To Reader's generous donation of books to our middle school.

We are a new charter middle and high school providing a college preparatory education to kids from two historically underserved neighborhoods of New York City, Washington Heights and Inwood. We are in the midst of a massive renovation project, turning our formerly part-vacant building into a safe and dynamic educational center for our students.

As we are without a central library, our goal has been to build classroom libraries. This is especially important because each week, school-wide, we set aside time for independent reading. But this renovation project has placed heavy constraints on our budget, making it difficult to purchase books that fall outside of the regular class lessons.

That's why the book donations from Reader To Reader have been so vital to us.

The books you have donated appeal to a range of interests and have increased our middle school students' choices, and with that we are certain comes an increased love and enjoyment of reading.Thank you once again for your support.

Warm regards,

Courtenay Barton
Development Manager
New Heights Academy Charter School
New York, NY

Thank You so Much for the Books

Dear David,

Thank you so much for the books. As you can see from the pictures, the students are happy to get them. Teachers are too. The Librarian has already started to put them up. You can see how bare our Library is. That's about to change! Thanks to Reader To Reader and you.

The Reading Specialist has a large number of boxes in her room and is distributing them to the K-6 classrooms. We plan to give the reading teacher of grades 7-8 their own sets too.


God bless you and all who help students and schools like ours.

Again, thank you.

Loretta McCoy, Principal
John Essex High School
Demopolis, Alabama

Thanks to Reader To Reader They are Reading Books!

Dear Mr. Mazor,

The Noxubee County Public Library Board of Trustees and I want to thank you and Reader to Reader for the excellent books that you have sent to us. Our patrons have really enjoyed the books, especially the hard backs and paperbacks of adult fiction. They have asked me to keep the westerns, mystery, cookbooks, biographies and romance books coming. It has helped bring back some of our adult readers to the library.

The smaller children have enjoyed the books and are looking forward to reading the new books. They enjoy easy fiction - 1st to 3rd grade books. We even have some of the ages 8-12 years old enjoying reading.

Noxubee County Library is in a rural area and sometimes it is hard for us to get the people into the library and to get them to read the different types of books that we offer, but thanks to Reader to Reader they are READING BOOKS!

Thank you for the help to our patrons to better themselves for the future.

Sincerely Yours,
Miss Judy E. Proffitt, Acting Director
Noxubee County Public Library
Macon Mississippi

Some history on the library:

“Erected in 1907 as the county jail, this three-storied brick structure was built in the Romanesque style of architecture. It was used as a place of incarceration for seventy years before being abandoned.

In 1982 a group of interested citizens began a fund-raising project to restore the property and to have the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places and to be declared a Mississippi Landmark, both distinctions insuring a protected status.”

Stacks of New Books

A big, big thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for the stacks and stacks of new books. They are a great resource as we head into the new school year. Here our Citizen Summer intern Meredith Wilson finishes organizing all the new titles.

Stephen and Tabitha King Bring Books to Rural Maine Schools

Stephen King's books may be mysterious, but it is no mystery why our Maine School Book Project has been such a success. It is thanks to the generous support of the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation.

The Project serves rural public schools in the town of Cutler, Caswell, Fort Fairfield, Van Buren, Limestone, Lubec, Monticello, New Sweden, Rockwood Twp, Stacyville, and Woodland, Maine.

Now in its fifth year, the Project has sent thousands of books to some of Maine’s most under-resourced schools.

We are grateful to the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation for their continuing support.

Reluctant Readers Turn On to Books

Dear David,

I certainly hope that you are having a good summer and are able to continue helping me collect books for our students. Your help these past years has been tremendous, helpful, and rewarding. To see reluctant readers turn on to books, and now have a book with them most if not all the time is TERRIFIC!!!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Words cannot begin to express my gratitude for all you have done to assist me and Hughes High School.

Take care.

Rae Hall
Hughes High School
Hughes, Arkansas

Smiles at Chestnut Accelerated Middle School

Our book delivery to Chestnut Accelerated Middle School for the Visual and Performing Arts brought big smiles and lots of cheers.

The Springfield, MA school has over 1,200 students in grades 6-8. They have a diverse student population which include Developmental, Student Support Self Contained, Bilingual Life Skills, Bilingual Self Contained Student Support, Life Skills, and Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities, Regular Bilingual, Pull out Model, Inclusion Model and the districts Talented and Gifted program.