Reaching out with books

Intermountain Catholic

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SALT LAKE CITY - Book fairs are quite common in schools around the country. Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Salt Lake City added a twist to their latest book fair. Jasmin Charles, mother of Our Lady of Lourdes second-grader Lexi Charles, organized a Reach Out and Read event in conjunction with the University of Utah PA program. Reach Out and Read is a national program that collects new and gently used books to be given out to children during visits with medical providers ("Literacy is health"). This particular group works with migrant farm workers in Utah. In the spring, doctors and PAs/PA students will be visiting migrant farmers to provide Head Start physicals to the workers' children. With these books, they will also be able to open the world of reading to children who might otherwise not have this opportunity. Of the 2,000 books that were collected, about one quarter of them were classroom sets that Our Lady of Lourdes teachers were no longer using or multiples of young adult readers. These books were taken to Midvale elementary and middle schools, where teachers often have to try to reserve multiple copies of books at the library for classroom use. The remaining 1,500 books were donated to the Reach Out and Read Program.