SHIRLEY — A love of books and the spirit of the holiday season is what sparked Lura A. White School’s book-gifting program, said librarian Kathryn Lyon.
Each day last week, each student was able to pick three to five books as a gift from the school.
“Research shows that the largest determining factor as to whether a child reads or not is whether the child has books around the home,” said Lyon. “That fact got me thinking about what else we can be doing as a school to make sure there are books around our students’ homes, and that is how this book-gifting program came about.”
The books that the children are picking from came largely from donations to the library.
“The books that are in the book-gifting bins are either duplicates of ones we already have or they are books that were unable to be cataloged and used in the library,” said Lyon. “We’re so fortunate to have such a generous community that donates books to us. Almost all of our high-interest readers — such as the ‘Magic Treehouse,’ ‘American Girl,’ and ‘Stanley’ books, were all donations.”
“I found an awesome wild-animal book,” said Russell Thompson, 6. — Katrina Folger
