Soldiers Home for Bedtime

Theresa Killingsworth normally sends boxes of donated baby wipes and beef jerky to American soldiers deployed overseas. But when the fourth-grade teacher at Catalina Venture School in Phoenix, AZ, saw a posting on anysoldier.com requesting children’s books, it caught her eye.

It turned out that Captain Gregory Pipes of B Company in Bagram, Afghanistan, wanted the books for “Read to me, Daddy (or Mommy!),” a program he started so parents in his unit could videotape themselves reading and then ship the tapes and books home to their children. Killingsworth contacted her local Borders store, which ran a three-week book drive at eight locations statewide. As of early September, Pipes had received some 800 books—and more are on the way.

Anysoldier.com, which launched during the U.S. deployment in Iraq, allows members of the military to post requests, which civilians can then fulfill.