Seven L. A. School Libraries Get Facelifts

Access Books will treat each recipient—which include libraries at McKinley Elementary School in Compton and Lankershim Elementary in North Hollywood—to fresh paint jobs and about 5,000 new books. The books, all pleasure reading classics or titles specifically requested by the schools, will be purchased with funding from corporations and grants, including the Governor's Books Fund, says Access Books' Executive Director Rebecca Constantino. Volunteers will help catalog the books.

Students will also receive thousands of used books, a part of the program aimed at connecting inner-city kids with children from schools in affluent neighborhoods, such as Kenter Canyon Elementary in Brentwood. The donor schools conduct their own used-book drive and attach a brief note explaining why they liked the book. The recipients, many of whom do not own books, are encouraged to take the titles home and write their own comments on return notes. Constantino says these notes are posted at the donor school, where she's heard kids say, "Hey, someone read my book!"

Since its inception in 1999, Access Books has distributed more than 600,000 books to L.A. inner-city schools. "We're planting the seed that this is what readers do—share what they've read," Constantino adds. More information is available on the Web at www.accessbooks.net.