Spring is coming, and with it comes our annual spring Read-a-Thon! (If you don't remember it being annual, that's because last year was a little unusual and we weren't able to have one...but that's enough about that!) In a nutshell, the Read-a-Thon is a week-long reading extravaganza and fundraiser that students do at home, but as the summary often leaves people scratching their heads about the what and the why of this thing, I'll try to elaborate briefly. 

What and When:

From now until March 4, students can come to the library to register for the event and pick up their packets. Each packet has a reading log and a pledge sheet. Students will then go to friends and family, asking for pledges of $0.05 or $0.10 per page read during the week of March 7-14. During that week, students will keep track of the pages they read, then figure up what their supporters owe. Example: 100 pages read at $0.10 per page means your supporter will owe $10.00. This can be in the form of cash or checks made out to CHESS, which will then be collected by the students and dropped off with their pledge sheets to the Front Desk by March 26. 

Why?

The library desperately needs new books! Yes, we're growing all the time, but parts of our collection really need updates. A recent inventory of our non-fiction collection indicated that the average publication date is 1997. Now, sometimes a book can stand the test of time quite well, and just because a book is old doesn't necessarily mean it's not usable...BUT in general, a good non-fiction collection should reflect the information from the last 10 years or so at the most (in case we're having a hard time accepting the truth of time, 1997 is...24 years old!) Also, books can become outdated in writing style and appearance, making them unappealing to students, and if a book sits unused on a shelf, it doesn't matter how good the information is inside. 

Books like these have had a good run, I'm sure...but they're not very appealing anymore.

And sometimes books can become SO used that they need to be replaced. Our pop-up books are well loved - and, I might add, of great appeal to children of visiting families. It's time to bring in some new ones!

They've been loved to pieces...literally!

So the library could really use your help this coming month to bring in some extra funds to restock and refresh our library collection. When we did this two years ago, we raised just over $500. Imagine what we could do with our new families and expanded reach!