Guys Lit Wire (GLW) is currently hosting its annual book fair, helping Ballou Senior High School in Washington D.C. buy 900 books for its half-filled shelves.
Readers can contribute by buying books for the library through Powell’s Books. The video embedded above shows the actual library. The book fair runs until May 18th.
GLW contributor Colleen Mondor explained in a post: “Ballou is very special to me as school librarian Melissa Jackson made such an eloquent case for her students’ need for more books. Her video, which shows so many empty shelves, really gave me reason to pause. There are probably more books in my house then Ballou has in this video and that is wrong in so many ways that I don’t even know where to begin. At the time the video was made early this year there were just over 1,150 books on the shelves at Ballou; there are over 1,200 students in the school. So there was barely one book for each student (the ALA standard is 11:1).”