ANAHEIM : Donations Earn Kids a PJ Day

Dressed in pajamas and with stuffed animals tucked under their arms, more than 400 of Benito Juarez Elementary School’s pupils showed up for class Wednesday looking more like sleepwalkers than students.

But the students were not suffering from an epidemic of sleeping sickness. Rather, the children were being rewarded with a midmorning pajama party, complete with a ghost story, for donating 1,051 books to the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults, which will transcribe the books into Braille.

“We wanted to help blind people because reading is important to everybody,” said Sarah Sawyer, a 10-year-old fifth-grader and the school’s student body vice president.

Dressed in rather conservative robes, nightshirts and pajamas, the students were divided into three groups and brought to the library, where the PTA gave them sodas and cookies. With lights dimmed, they listened to Principal Randy Wiethorn tell the story of a man who digs up his dead wife’s golden arm and of the consequences that befall him.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to wear our pajamas to school,” said Laura Reilly, a 9-year-old fourth-grader who was decked out in Scottish plaid pajamas. She carried her teddy bear, Tanya, which was wrapped in a white shawl and had a pink bow on its head.

Adriana Whitmore, also 9 and in fourth grade, was wearing a nightshirt and carrying her teddy bear, Jennifer.

“This was fun because we got to turn off the lights, listen to a story and forget about class for a while,” she said.

Weithorn said the day taught the children that to have fun you sometimes have to earn it.

“The children had been asking to have a pajamas day, but we wanted to have it relate to something, so one of our teachers suggested donating the books to the blind,” Wiethorn said. Jean Dyon Norris, the action fund’s program director, said she was grateful to the children for their donation. She said the books will be transcribed, then taken apart and the Braille pages inserted side by side with the printed pages.

“This allows blind parents to read to their sighted children and the children can read along,” Norris said. “We asked the (Juarez) children to concentrate on kindergarten and first-grade books because we are so desperate for them. There are so many blind parents and blind children who can use these books.”