ANAHEIM : Children’s Home Receives 300 Books

Though it’s been nearly one month since the holiday season, this week residents at Canyon Acres Residential Center in Anaheim Hills received a late Christmas present from some supportive friends in Newport Beach.

The gift--about 300 books for the start of a library at the center--is one that directors at the children’s home say will last far beyond the holidays.

“We survive here by community help,” said development manager Katie Herbert. “I would not budget books or purchase books.”

Executive Director Dan McQuaid added: “It’s nice that (they have) helped us with something we otherwise would not have been able to provide.”

The gift comes from patrons of Villa Nova, a harbor-front Italian restaurant in Newport Beach. It is owned by local resident Jim Dale, who this year decided to offer a different type of present to the youngsters.

“The restaurant used to give toys every year, and this year I asked them: ‘What do you guys really need? What do you want?’ ” Dale said.

Some brainstorming among the restaurateur and center workers produced the book idea, and McQuaid said the large number of books is enough to start a library that he hopes other volunteers will help create for the center.

The Anaheim center is a 4 1/2-acre ranch that provides a transition home for abused children until they are ready to move to foster homes or to their birth parents.

Children, who range in age from 5 to 12 and include many victims of sexual abuse, typically remain at the ranch for just more than a year.

Herbert said some of the children are illiterate and others homeless, lagging well behind their age groups in academic development.

“The books will help them on their leisure time and will help their tutors,” Herbert said.

Dale said he was proud of the books that his customers dropped in a huge stocking that hung in the restaurant over the holidays. He said the first book was a dictionary and others included many children’s classics. A Costa Mesa bookstore also provided discounts that were used to purchase additional books for the center.

“People really used their heads and handpicked books that people would really like, and that might inspire the kids to learn and read,” he said.

Dale added that he would like to make the books, rather than the typical gift of toys, the new, annual present to the center. He hopes to hang the stocking in the restaurant and collect more books for the library next holiday season.