Students at a Nanaimo school will get more material to nurture their love of reading thanks to assistance from Chapters bookstore.
Coal Tyee Elementary School has been chosen as a participant of Indigo Love of Reading Foundation’s Adopt a School program, which pairs the school with the Nanaimo bookstore in an effort to raise money for and donate books to the school’s library. Kristin Singbeil, Coal Tyee teacher-librarian, has applied for the program for three years and said the library needs an infusion of fresh books.
“Our collection is actually quite old, so our average age of our books is 20 years,” said Singbeil. “A lot of our books are from a school, Mount Benson, that closed about a decade ago, so that’s why we have a large amount of books, but that’s because they’ve come over from that other library.”
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In particular Singbeil would like to update the collection of lower-level novels and the aboriginal section.
“Even just some of our non-fiction. They’re all kind of outdated. Today a teacher was asking about communities and we’ve got some community helpers that are pictures of before and now, but the now is from the ’90s, so it looks like a long time ago,” said Singbeil.
When asked about what is popular among Coal Tyee students, Singbeil points to graphic novels and “anything to do with the Titanic and dinosaurs,” and in terms of in-demand educational books, Doug English, Coal Tyee principal, says it is dependent on what students are learning in class.
“If the students are working on something to do with an ancient civilization that would be the go-to and I believe that we have some books to support those curriculum areas, but any time that we can have an infusion of books from anybody, is helpful,” said English. “We have a certain budget. I think we’re around $2,500-$3,000 a year, which doesn’t go that far from a school’s perspective.”
Monetary donations are being accepted until Sunday, Oct. 6 and people can also purchase books from a registry selected by the school.
For more information, go to www.loveofreading.org.
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