NEWPORT BEACH : Library to Honor Young Fund-Raisers

Children who have been reading books to raise money for a new library in Newport Beach will be honored Sunday with a holiday thank-you party.

The children were participants of a city “read-a-thon” in which children enlisted sponsors who paid them to read books. They raised just over $1,600 toward the new library that is expected to open in 1993.

Donations from $3 to $340 were received by the children who read from a few to dozens of books. The top fund-raisers read 100 books during the event, which started in October and finished on Nov. 26.

“It was a wide range. Some collected 10 cents or a quarter a book, and some collected $5 a book,” said Judy Kelley, a program coordinator at the library. “It stressed the importance of reading and the importance of valuing the library.”

The 30 children will be treated Sunday to refreshments, entertainment and a visit from Santa Claus at the Community Room of the Newport Beach Public Library at Newport Center. Top fund-raisers will be awarded prizes.

The top money earner will receive free passes to Disneyland. Other fund-raisers will win trips to Santa Catalina Island, dinners at the Crab Cooker restaurant or library T-shirts, all of which have been donated.

The children will also be included on the library’s donors’ wall, which recognizes all who have contributed to the new facility.

“It recognizes them as a group, and it will be there for years to come,” said Kelley. “People stay in this city. A lot of them will grow up and use the library as adults” and will be able to see their donations credited on the wall, she said.

The read-a-thon was sponsored jointly by the Newport-Mesa Unified School District and the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit group that has pledged to raise $1.5 million for the new library through donations.

The new library, to be named the Central Library, is slated to open in the fall of 1993. Groundbreaking is planned in June, 1992, on Coast Highway near MacArthur Boulevard.