Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Got Books?



The title says it all, Got Books?

A friend of mine from high school, Shelbi, teaches high school English and Journalism in a lower income school in the Portland, Oregon area. A few years back funding cuts caused the school to lose the librarian. Things have just gone down hill from there. Shelbi has resorted to keeping books in her classroom for her students to read. While most books are returned after the student reads them, some do grow legs and never come back. The students are mostly from lower income homes and don't have huge access to books, so whatever Shelbi can provide is greatly appreciated. She says books like The Hunger Games and Looking for Alaska are always well loved, and she ends up buying new copies of those books every year.

Along with providing access to books, Shelbi teachs Journalism, trying to produce a school newspaper and yearbook. This class has an extremely limited budget, which means no money to provide digital cameras to her students to use. How can one have a yearbook or a newspaper without pictures?

And this is where you come in...

Shelbi is always seeking books for her students to read. These books would have been published in the past 15 years or so, and would be considered mainstream reading. You know, the best sellers list that you see at Barnes and Noble or on Amazon. She's not looking for old cookbooks or How-Tos. They don't have to be aimed at kids or from the Young Adult section. Just in good shape and able to be passed around from kid to kid.

She is also seeking digital cameras, still functional and working. They can be the point and shoot style or something more fancy. They can come with cables, battery chargers, memory cards, cases, or none of that (although it would be helpful.) She can dig around to find the correct cables and such, as long as she has the cameras to connect them to.



Can you help the students who want to read?

If you have books or cameras to send to Shelbi, let me know and I'll get you her school address. Shelbi can provide tax receipts from the school if you'd like one.

Just to give you an idea about how little this costs, I sent a bankers box full of books from Kansas to Oregon and it costs less than $15. Mailing media mail is an inexpensive way to ship books.

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