School’s Library Starts a New Chapter

Students and teachers Friday celebrated the transformation of Calvert Street Elementary School’s library from, as the principal put it, “an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan.”

The school used $20,000 from fund-raisers and a $20,000 donation to double the size of its library. The donation to Wonder of Reading, a nonprofit organization, came from an anonymous source.

The 430-student campus was able to replace many outdated, tattered books with new, award-winning tomes. In addition, a program using volunteers to help children read will be established.

At a ceremony highlighted by poems and songs by children, Los Angeles Unified School District board member Valerie Fields said the library’s bright, inviting atmosphere will make reading more interesting to children.

“I was a voracious reader as a kid, but other kids have to be lured into it,” she told the audience.

The 1,600-square-foot library includes carpeted bleachers called “story steps” that will be used for storytelling, a beanbag-chair nook for reading, a tutoring area and a computer center named after Tyler Chernoff, a first-grade student at Calvert who was killed in a car accident in July.

This is the 48th LAUSD library to get a make-over by the Wonder of Reading, according to founder Chris Forman. The organization is working on new libraries at Granada Elementary School in Granada Hills and Lanai Road Elementary School in Encino.

Children got a tour of the library Friday, but it will not reopen until Jan. 8 when they return from winter break. Students have been without a library since the beginning of the school year, instead using books transferred from the library into the classrooms.

Library aide Deena Lester is excited about the new facility.

“The old library was deplorable. We had books saying, ‘One day we may send a man to the moon,’ ” Lester said.