Countywide : Book Drive Effort Wins a Serenade

Postal workers in the county were serenaded Thursday by the students of George Washington Carver Elementary School in Santa Ana as they celebrated a book drive that collected more than 100,000 titles for the school’s library and other schools and community centers throughout the county.

In the third annual drive to promote literacy, postal workers collected book requests from 16 local schools and organizations countywide. The carriers last month distributed 900,000 flyers along their routes asking residents to donate books by simply leaving them near mailboxes to be picked up with the daily mail.

“The basic idea was to get books to the kids,” said Barbara Bielman, a postal worker in El Toro who helped collect and sort books. The weeklong effort netted five times more books than last year’s drive, Bielman said.

Friday’s ceremony at the school auditorium featured a short student play for the postal workers in attendance. The children had been excused from class for the event and sat in rows of chairs ready to dig through the bins of educational and children’s books.

“These books will be put to good use,” said Lupe O’Leary, principal at Carver Elementary, which will be receiving some of the books to stock its empty library. The school in central Santa Ana opened its doors just this Monday and officials have yet to purchase books for the library. “The kids have already begun reading some of them.”

Organizers said the books in highest demand are textbooks, encyclopedias, reference materials and children’s books.

“This is overwhelming. Many of us didn’t realize how massive this would be and how many youngsters will benefit from it,” said Mary Lou Vachet, the principal of the Albert Sitton School in Orange. She said the school houses delinquent or wayward youths who are closely supervised and are not allowed to make impromptu trips to the library. They will be able use the books for reference and pleasure reading.

“We try to encourage them to read books,” Vachet said. “We’ve just got to give them something to read.”