Way back in December I got an email from Jen on the Moon, who is part of a librarian social group in New York. Their group decided to adopt a school in New Orleans to send books to. The slow pace of recovery in New Orleans is a huge point of frustration. So this group in New York set up an Amazon wish list; the teachers at A.P. Tureaud Elementary School added their desired books to the list, and then anyone who wanted to could choose a book from the list that would get sent to the school. They started with about 250 books on the list, but you know, you can't stop librarians from buying books. I bought three, and all the librarians I sent the message on to enthusiastically ordered books as well. 250 books is not that many, so as they got close to having no books left on their wish list, but there were still plenty of librarians with their wallets out, they added more stuff: classroom sets of dictionaries, books in Spanish, multiple copies of books by Black authors, books about jazz and New Orleans culture. One of the organizers of the New York group, a New Orleans native, went down to visit her family and took some pictures of the school and the area. It is wonderful to see the atmosphere the school has created in the middle of such devastation. (Here's an example of what the kids go through some days.)
The other day I got a lovely thank-you card from Marlon at Tureaud. I think it's Marlon. Could be Marion or Mylan. (I erased the last name for student privacy). On the front of the card an adult had written ''570 books and counting.''
For most libraries, our number one problem is shelf space. There are so many wonderful, useful, beloved books, and no library can hope to have enough shelf space for all of them. For libraries in New Orleans, there are two problems: a rather more severe than usual lack of shelf space (eight public libraries were completely destroyed), and a serious book shortage. We can't do much about the first problem, but we can get all over the second one. As an added bonus, I just found out that A.P. Tureaud himself, an important civil rights lawyer who won all the most important desegregation cases in Louisiana, worked as a library clerk while putting himself through school. It all comes back to libraries in the end.
5 comments:
i wish that jen had let me know about this project. nice to see that librarians did a heck of a job...unlike brownie.
It's not too late, JHM! They are keeping a wish list on Amazon--go to Amazon, click on "gift and wish lists" and search for "tureaud". There's always a need for more books, cause they're kids so some books get damaged or lost. Know what, I'm going to post this info to the blog proper.
faith, so glad to read about your blogpost about ap tureaud. i am amazed at how positive the response has been. i was told the other day that my friend's retired father has a letter-writing relationship with one of the kids. apparently he assigns book reports!
jhm, i did send you an email about the project, to your AOL account. it might have gone into your spam because i put all the contacts in the bcc field. i knew i could hit you up for some money!
In it something is. Thanks for the help in this question. All ingenious is simple.
Certainly, it is not right
Post a Comment