A serious contribution to community

One of the things that shocked me when I moved to Indiana was the woeful contribution made from tax dollars to the elementary school library system. I can imagine no more eloquent and dismal statement than the fact that the collection of communal books in the elementary schools system is primarily dependent on voluntary contributions. By all appearances, this is equally true of the parochial schools.

This evening, I'm reading an engrossing essay in The New York Times Book Review. In the essay, A.J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, relates his reaction to a recent NYTBR review. Jacobs' essay is titled "I Am Not a Jackass," and here is how it begins...

I experienced plenty of strange things in the weeks following the publication of my book. I got to meet my one and only rabid fan - a man who took off his sweater to reveal passages of my book scrawled on his T-shirt in Magic Marker. I got to see firsthand the alarmingly high average age of the American reader - at one event, there were no fewer than three women with oxygen tanks in the front row (reminder to self: write more books...fast!)...

I've noted the same phenomenon myself (absent the oxygen masks). We're here now, and don't plan to retire for another 25 years. And while we have some dear friends of school age that we consider to be "our" kids, if current trends continue we'll be selling more reading glasses than children's books as the years pass.

It may be that our local kids have lost the habit of reading, and that's the fault of all of us. That reading has become less popular may have something to do with the fact that New Albany has been without a full-service, general new bookstore for, by one account, the last 57 years.

So, let's see what we can do about it, starting right now.

Come in and buy a book appropriate for an elementary school library. Tell us which school you want the book to go to. For every two dollars spent by you, we'll add another dollar in book credit for that school's library. Another way to put it: for every two books purchased, we'll donate the value of one book to the school of your choice in Floyd, Harrison, Washington, Scott, or Clark counties.

Choose from among the many books we've selected for this program all this week. On Saturday, I'll report back to you the results of this effort. If you can't make it into the store, call and we'll make a selection for you. Just tell us which elementary school you want to be the beneficiary.