The Oglala Lakota College Library, with its several branches, is the only community library for the entire Pine Ridge Reservation. Located in the beautiful but harsh Badlands of South Dakota, Pine Ridge has the lowest per capita income in the U.S. and not a single bookstore. The librarians are working hard to improve services for children–and you helped them greatly by buying they wanted for their young readers.

ReadThis would like to thank our board member, Katha Pollitt, for all she did to organize this drive; Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn for posting the wishlist and being such a wonderful partner in encouraging people to buy the books and get them out to the reservation; and we would especially like to thank our members who purchased the 95 books. What a great contribution to these young readers! Here is a thank you from the librarian at Oglala, which we received just before the holidays:

This is just a note to the best of the best…..all of you out there that care about kids and care about a  library…… Thank you so much for your interest and generosity in our young people on the Pine Ridge Reservation!!! We are always looking for ways to get ‘our’ kids into the reading spirit and these books were absolutely wonderful! We send many, many good wishes to you and our friends for all you do,  happy days and holidays forever after!!!   Rest easy and stay well my friends!!!!

Michelle May, Director

OLC Woksape Tipi Academic & Public Library
Kyle, South Dakota

The Oglala Lakota College Library, with its several branches, is the only community library for the entire Pine Ridge Reservation. Located in the beautiful but harsh Badlands of South Dakota, Pine Ridge has the lowest per capita income in the U.S. and not a single bookstore. The librarians are working hard to improve services for children–and you can help by donating new books for them to borrow.
The books listed here are those requested by the library. You can purchase them from Greenlight Bookstore and they will be shipped to the library free of charge. (Please note the quantities needed for each title; quantities will be updated as books are purchased.)

Here’s the link to the registry:

http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/oglala-lakota-college-library-registry

Thank you for all of your help! And we will let you know when we’ve gotten the job done.

Here is the link to the store: http://bluedoorbooks.com/index.php. We will let you know in a few months what your coffee buys.

NYC students competing in a Battle of the Books competition last year

For as little as $5.99 you can get a book into the hands of a 4th or 5th grader in West Harlem. These kids want to compete in Battle of the Books, but they need help getting the books. Can we buy them a total of 48 books in the next 14 days so they are ready to compete?

This link takes you to the wishlist at an independent bookstore in Brooklyn:

http://www.wordbrooklyn.com/help-readthis-battle-books-west-harlem

Jeffrey Rotter (left) at a ReadThis book drive event

If you want to hear what ReadThis has done and hopes to do in the next months, listen to this NYU radio interview with ReadThis board members, Jeffrey Rotter and Biz Mitchell.

2011-08-10_citywide

National Book Award Winners in all categories for 2010

Through ReadThis, our friends at the National Book Foundation once again donated Young Adult books to a school that needed them. A full 138 books went off to a public middle school in Brooklyn. You can read here how much the donation meant. Thank you, National Book Foundation:

Dear ReadThis and the National Book Foundation,

I am writing to you to express my heartfelt gratitude for your generous donation of books
to the Grade 8 Humanities Program at KAPPA V middle school in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Three large boxes full of brand new books arrived in my school’s office addressed to me.  I am not exaggerating when I say that there were audible “oohs” and “ahhs” from the few students present in my room as I opened the first box.  Not surprisingly, three students asked to sign-out books they found interesting on the spot.

Teaching is difficult enough under ideal circumstances.  Having taught at a Title I school
(almost all of our students are entitled to reduced-price or free meals) for the past 5 years,
I have learned to deal with the additional challenge of scraping together most of my
classroom resources on my own.  On more than one occasion, I have used my personal
savings to purchase class sets of novels I wanted to share with my students.  With all New
York public schools facing drastic budget cuts, asking administrators to purchase reading
materials would certainly prove to be a naive exercise in futility.

With the books you have provided for me, I can supplement my somewhat worn classroom
library with a great selection of new, high-interest novels and non-fiction for my
Humanities students.  Despite the growing obsession with test preparation and “teaching
to the test,” study after study continues to prove the same thing: independent reading is
THE best form of test preparation available to our students.  With hair-trigger attention
spans, our students will only continue to read independently when provided with high-
interest reading like the materials you have sent me.  I look forward to sharing these
resources with my students and fellow teachers over the course of the coming academic
year, and cannot thank you enough for your time and effort to brighten up my classroom
and my students’ lives with your much-needed gift.

Sincerely,
Andrew L. Mills
Grade 8 Humanities – KAPPA V (MS 518)

Beckett on delivery day with PS 46 Principal Karyn Nicholson

We have got to hand it to two of ReadThis’ youngest members, Beckett and his friend, Eli, who threw a joint birthday party and asked their friends to bring books to donate to a public school in New York that needed them. ReadThis directed them to P.S. 46, Edward Blum school in Fort Greene, which has a nice new library, but serves one of the lowest income communities and is greatly in need of books, particularly nonfiction.

Over 50 books were collected — a great gift to the school. Thanks too to Beckett’s mother, Lindsay, who delivered the books to the school.

If anyone else would like to hold a birthday book party and donate books to a school, hospital, or literacy center in need, please get in touch with ReadThis at readthisorg@gmail.com.

Students at Science Skills Center High School in Brooklyn with their new homework

The Weinstein Company donated 500 copies of The Road by Cormac McCarthy through ReadThis to the Bronx Academy and to Science Skills Center High School in Brooklyn. The books will be taught to senior classes and AP English this spring.