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.

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.

Christian Science Monitor Features Reader To Reader

Boxes and boxes: Intern Meredith Wilson sorts through books for the Reader to Reader program on the campus of Amherst College, Mass.
photo: ann hermes/the Christian Science Monitor


Finding a welcome home for used books

With volunteer effort, David Mazor's idea has helped readers around the U.S.

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the July 25, 2008 edition

Amherst, Mass. - It all started with a stack of books that needed a home.

David Mazor had some leftovers after collecting book donations for his daughter's state college. He Googled "poorest state" and came up with Mississippi. He searched for its poorest town and up popped Durant, a tiny thumbprint near the road connecting Memphis and New Orleans.

The next morning he called the town's high school librarian and asked if they needed any books. "At our school," he recalls her saying, "if someone wants to learn about landing on the moon, we don't have any books that current."

Eight years later, you'd need a shelf about 30 times the length of Durant's main drag to hold the 2,000,000 new and gently used books Mr. Mazor has distributed throughout the United States.

Each delivery is like a rain shower on thirsty land: School library spending per student has declined about 40 percent since 2000, to $11.24, according to the American Library Association.

At first, friends' donations landed in Mazor's garage, where he matched them to librarians' wish lists and shipped them off, charging postage to his credit card.

"It was so exciting to see how much the schools responded to what we were sending," he says, delight flashing across his face. "My wife thought I was kind of crazy because I woke up in the middle of the night and said, 'I know what I'm going to do!' " He shifted away from his work as a film distributor and launched a nonprofit, Reader to Reader, to sustain his matchmaking efforts.

Growing up in a family that loved to read, Mazor couldn't tolerate so many children lacking books. "In affluent communities, people were often just sort of tossing the books away because they didn't know what to do with them," he says. "We could match up that need with that resource."

It's a simple idea, but for librarians like Carla Clauschee, no one had ever proposed it before. When Mazor called her at Navajo Pine High School in Navajo, N.M., telling her he could send books, she replied, "That's great – but I can't pay for them."

Ms. Clauschee agreed to his offer because she was "really desperate," she says. Every librarian can tell horror stories of useless donations showing up at their doorstep, so "when somebody comes along and genuinely wants to help ... you have to think positive. You have to think that the box that's coming is not moth-eaten." Thanks to her trust, a once "prehistoric" collection has been updated over the past seven years with more than 7,000 books, including collections of native American literature.

"We want every single box of books that a school opens to be in absolutely fantastic condition, to be like a Christmas present," Mazor says as he casts his eye around the basement book haven that serves as Reader to Reader headquarters.

The group long ago moved out of Mazor's garage to the storage area of Amherst College's Cadigan Center for Religious Life, a squat brick building on the edge of campus. The college donated the space and some computers, and also coordinates student work-study jobs and internships here.

"It's always funny to note what was current in the 1950s," says Meredith Wilson, an intern who's a junior at Amherst. As she sorts, she says they send the books that aren't fresh enough to prisoners – or to the recycling bin.

A publisher once sent 5,000 math books. Church groups and sororities pass along the fruits of their book drives. One box of children's books came with a handmade doll attached to each. A retired teacher rented a U-Haul to deliver 35 boxes. And occasionally, there's the inexplicable: "Someone sent us hats once – sombreros," Ms. Wilson says.

Volunteers help organize books into genres and grade levels. Simple wooden shelves hold everything from science fiction paperbacks to art history textbooks to books on tape. Some stacks are labeled with fluorescent sticky notes – or half a note, a hint at the group's frugality.

Mazor's "corner office" is a windowless cramped corner. His computer sits on a desk he found on the side of the road. Wire mesh separates him from the furnace, and wooden clothespins attach his calendar and thank you notes to the wire.

With an operating budget of just $200,000, Mazor says, the group sends out about $1 million worth of books a year. By keeping things simple, they can respond to most requests immediately.

Clauschee works with many students who test well below grade level in reading. Several years ago she asked Mazor for "manga," or graphic novels. "A lot of kids won't carry around a book on a second-grade reading level if they're in high school. ... But it's really cool to carry around a graphic novel," she says. She and Mazor realized that having books on the shelves isn't always enough to encourage students to read. So they tried an online mentoring project with a class Clauschee taught last year. Mazor recruited student workers to read books of the Navajo students' choosing and participate in an online discussion. They started off with mostly native American authors, such as the popular Sherman Alexie, but broadened out with "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Kite Runner."

At first the Navajo students' posts were short and obligatory, says Wilson, one of the mentors. But Clauschee taught them to think about character development, writing style, and the author's background. The teens started logging on in their free time and making deeper comments.

Communicating one-on-one with their mentors as they read native American literature, they were "fearless," Clauschee says. "Pretty soon, the kids ... were doing their own literary criticism."

At the close of the school year, Mazor asked each student in the Navajo Pine class to give him a list of seven books they'd like to read over the summer. He bought everything on their lists, and already has bought three more for a girl who devoured her seven.

Mazor's colleagues describe him as a man who makes things happen. But he's a humble executive director. "I can remember starting this all by myself, and now we have so many other people involved," he says. "That's really what makes something like this successful – it's a team effort."


The original article can be found at http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0725/p01s09-usgn.html

Helping the Amherst Survival Center Help So Many

A quick stop yesterday to donate hundreds of coloring books to the Amherst Survival Center.

The coloring books were courtesy a generous donation from Modern Publishing.

The Amherst Survival Center provides “a welcoming community where people in need receive food, clothing, relief from isolation, and social service referrals and information. No one is turned away. An equally important function of the Center is to help people move beyond a condition of need, to help them to help themselves and each other.”

What an important role they fill!

I Was Honestly Stunned By The Number of Titles Included In The Delivery

Dear Mr. Mazor,

On behalf of the students and staff of Anna E. Barry School we would like to express a heart-felt 'Thank You' for the generous book donation from Reader to Reader, Inc.

I was honestly stunned by the number of titles included in the delivery, the wonderful condition and the appropriateness for our elementary students. We look forward to going through all the boxes and distributing the books to the classrooms and library. There is no doubt the teachers and students of Barry School will be overjoyed!

We thank you for supporting the school and very much look forward to Reader to Reader's next visit.

Sincerely,

David T. Drugan, Principal
Anna E. Barry Elementary
Chicopee, MA

Thank You From Mosier Elementary

Dear Mr. Mazor,

On behalf of the students of Mosier Elementary School, we thank you for the Reader to Reader, Inc. donation of books to the Mosier School Library and classroom libraries. A bookplate has been attached to the inside cover of each book to acknowledge "Reader to Reader".

Due to the severe fiscal situation faced by schools over the last decade, funds for acquisition of books for the library are very limited. Your response through Reader to Reader has helped us to modernize and expand the collection of in the Mosier School Library and to keep vital the students interest.

The generosity of the donations from "Reader to Reader" and your understanding of the needs of our school reflect the spirit of cooperation which contribute to the success in excellence in education that we value and promote at Mosier School and in South Hadley.

We thank you for your interest in Mosier School and your ongoing support of education in our community.

Sincerely,

Patricia J. Auth, Principal
Mosier Elementary School
S. Hadley, MA

Citizen Summer Interns at Work

Our hardworking Citizen Summer interns, Meredith and Samia, loaded up the van for another delivery of brand new children’s books. Thankfully, they have strong backs because we have been delivering thousands of books to area schools.

Amherst College’s Citizen Summer Pioneer Valley program provides fully-funded summer internships for eight weeks so they can work for local non-profit organizations. It is a great way for them to learn about the needs of the local community while helping provided much needed assistance.

In addition to delivering books our interns are using their computer skills to design brochures, and research additional organizations that are in need of books.

Welcome Citizen Summer Interns

Amherst College juniors Samia Hesnia and Meredith Wilson will be spending their summers with Reader To Reader as a part of Amherst College’s Citizen Summer program. The newly launched program run by Amherst’s Center for Community Engagement funds over 200 summer interns to work for a wide variety of not-for profit and community organizations from "Springfield to Sioux Falls to Sierra Leone. "

We are pleased to welcome Samia and Meredith to Reader To Reader. They will be of immense help in all areas of our operation as we prepare for the upcoming school year.