Lit Blogs Collect Books for Native American Students

By Jason Boog 

powellsbooks.pngThere is no better way to review a book than to share it with a young person. Instead of critical content today, GalleyCat Reviews is sharing a special request from the literary blog community.

Guys Lit Wire, Readergirlz, YALSA, and If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything for a new book fair campaign–collecting books for students at Ojo Encino Day School in New Mexico and Alchesay High School in Arizona. Readergirlz and the ALA have mounted a larger campaign to help publishers bring books to reservation school libraries across the country, but the this particular partnership will only focus on two schools.

These campaigns make a real difference–last year the group held a Book Fair for Boys, collecting over 600 books for boys at the LA County Detention Center. Here’s more from the post: “It only takes a few minutes worth of research about life for the average Native American teen on the reservation to realize that they are important, perhaps more now than ever. Books are power–we are all book lovers and we know that; most of us learned it when we were kids. Books showed us worlds like our own, as well as places we could not imagine. They taught us how to cope, gave us big ideas to ponder and dared us to dream great futures.”


The directions are slightly complex, so here is how to donate books: “First, hit the Powell’s site and on the upper right click on ‘wish list.’ From there you will be prompted for the email address of the list owner. Type in ‘guyslitwire@gmail.com.’ You will then be given the choice to select either Ojo Encino or Alchesay. Once you are looking at the lists (which contain hundreds of titles) you can make your selection of a new, used, or sale copy. After your done and ready to make your purchase you will be asked to confirm that you are buying books for a certain wishlist.”