Book Drive: Help a Compton School Create a Library From Scratch!

[rachelmanija]

I am holding an online book drive to benefit a middle school/high school in Compton. If you have any young adult or middle grade (children's) books in good condition, you can help create a school library by mailing them to the address at the bottom of this post.

If you don't have any books, please consider linking to this post.

Books with Latino/Latina or African-American protagonists would probably be especially appreciated, as that describes most of the students. The students also love manga and other comics, and were hugely excited when I donated some. Many students can read Spanish, and some primarily read Spanish. Other than that, send anything - fiction or nonfiction.

Lifeline Education Charter School is in a low income area, and textbooks are so expensive that they can't afford to buy other books. Mr. Obed Nartey, with whom I had a lovely talk at the school the other day, is creating a new library/computer lab for the students. He is also starting a book club.

Students are already excited about this... but they need something to read. Please help them out, if you can. I will put up some photos of the library which you helped create, when it launches.

Please send books here. Media mail is the cheapest way to mail books.

Attn: Mr. Obed Nartey
Lifeline Education Charter School
225 South Santa Fe
Compton, CA 90221

If you think you'll send something, please comment, so I can give Mr. Nartey a heads-up to expect some packages.

ETA: If you're thinking of ordering something specifically for the school, Reading in Color has a bunch of book reviews here which might give you some ideas: http://blackteensread2.blogspot.com/p/reviews-by-title.html

She also has several book lists: http://blackteensread2.blogspot.com/p/booklists.html

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Yeeeah. And part of the problem was that since I didn't have any useful lists handy (having forgotten my phone at home), all we could really do was look at covers and check protagonist names. So I'm guessing there were at least some great books with non-white protagonists that we missed because they were...well, invisible to us, at least on a brisk multi-shelf scan like we were doing.

I tried to find some books that weren't Problem Books, which is a little harder in contemporary; there are a few about adoption and slavery and culture clash, but I remembered that it's nice to be able to read about Someone Like Me where the whole damn book isn't about how being Someone Like Me is full of hardship on account of that aspect. (I love Breadcrumbs to pieces for having a protagonist who's in a mixed-race adoption, and while that's clearly an important part of her life, the book isn't about that. At all.)

I ended up mostly with biographies on the non-fiction side of things, because everything else either looked to be aimed too young, or was too much a glossy picture Fun Facts guide rather than a book to read through. I gather that in non-fiction, YA isn't nearly so much of a marketing category, compared to children's non-fic.