As the 11th Annual Read-A-Thon continues, students enjoyed Reading Recess on Tuesday April 19th! HTPTA parents brought books and magazines from the library outside, and spread out picnic blankets for our readers to get comfy. We spent time reading together aloud and silently, and popular choices today were books about dinosaurs, Rainbow Magic Fairy books, and The Ugly Five by Julia Donaldson. It was a lot of fun to connect over stories, and all of the readers were very excited to be bringing reading outdoors.
Have you seen our library lately? Joy Burke is our new librarian this year and she has brought a lot of fresh energy, ideas, and organization to it! Books have been rearranged to make it easy to “shop”, and many are displayed face out to catch readers’ eyes. Popular subjects in non-fiction like dinosaurs and rocks/gems are grouped in easy access bins, and there’s a new magazine section too!
The books in the library have been in need of updating for some time and unfortunately, schools don’t receive funding from the district for this. This year, HTPTA has supported our library with a grant of $9,000 to purchase 500 new books! There is a multi-year plan to continue refreshing our books, and to bring our library from its current state to an Exemplar ALA rating. It will take another $16,000 over the next three years to accomplish this. We like to dream big, and we know that reading is important to our community.
This year’s Read-A-Thon fundraising goal is $12,500, and as of Tuesday night we are at $6,485. We need your help to reach our goal, and to continue supporting our school library and our readers! Please donate today, and your donation will go directly to PTA supported projects and programs like this one. Every Orca benefits from this!
Visit www.htpta.org/read-a-thon to find out how to set up donation and reading progress pages for your kiddos, or simply give directly to HTPTA – text HTREADS to 44321. Thank you for your support!
