Spread Some Holiday Good Cheer With Ballou High School & Pledge To Read 5 Books With the Students

As many of you know, we are very big friends with librarian Melissa Jackson at Ballou Sr High School in Washington DC. Melissa has done an amazing job over the past few years of taking her school library from less than one book for each student to a ratio now of more than five. She will be moving into a modern library and media center next fall when the new Ballou High School is opened. (The old one was built in the late 1950s - almost SIXTY years ago!)

But while the facilities are truly impressive, the budget does not have room for new books. So, we have updated the Ballou Wish List at Powells Books and hope that many of you will consider buying a book for these worthy students as you do your own holiday shopping.

Before you head over to the wish list though, please take note of Ballou's We Read! Reading Initiative that includes a pledge to read five books by April. If you want to show your support of Ballou's efforts to get teens reading, then print out the pledge, sign it and send a picture holding it up to Melissa via instagram or on their facebook page. You can even send a tweet letting her know you promise to read books in support of Ballou.

And now, after the cut find out more about shopping the wish list for Ballou!
So, you know the drill - a wish list has been created at Powells books that has been vetted by both Melissa and her student literary leaders. We continue to partner with Powells because they do a killer job of getting the books out fast, they offer lots of sale titles (be sure and watch for those) and their "Standard" used copies a pretty much like new. Plus, we are supporting a bricks and mortar store in the fine city of Portland, Oregon which is nice way connecting both sides of the country in one outstanding literary effort.

Yeah, we love Powells.

Our Holiday Wish List for Ballou, (here's the link if you want to embed it in a post: http://bit.ly/GLWBookFair), includes a ton of brand new books that came out this fall and we are very excited to make them available to the kids at Ballou. Feel free to check out the list at your leisure and make your selections. While we prefer new it is perfectly fine to purchase used copies of a book (more bang for your buck), but make sure the book is in "standard" used condition and not "student owned" (you will have to click on the title and leave the wish list to check this). The "student owned" copies are very cheap for a reason - they are written in and thus not a good choice for this effort.

Once you have made your selections head to "checkout" and you will be prompted to inform Powells if the books were indeed bought from the wishlist. This lets the store know to mark them as "purchased" on the list. After that you need to provide your credit card info and also fill in the shipping address. (If you have already done this in the past the info will be saved to your Powells account.) Here is where the books are going to:

Melissa Jackson, LIBRARIAN
Ballou Senior High School
3401 Fourth Street SE
Washington DC 20032
(202) 645-3400

It's very important that you get Melissa's name and title in there - she is not the only Jackson (or Melissa) at the school and we want to make sure the books get to the library.

After that you pay for the books and you're done! Please head back over here when you get a chance and leave a comment letting us know who you are, where you're from and what you bought. Also be sure to follow @BallouLibrary on twitter where Melissa will be updating on books as they arrive and student reactions. You can also let her know what you have ordered that way - she will be delighted to let the kids know what's coming their way.

The Book Fair will be open for 2 weeks - through December 11th. Happy Holidays!!!!