Sign up for the paNOW newsletter

UPDATED:Local schools set for book boost

Sep 22, 2018 | 12:00 PM

Three in-need schools in our region – Christopher Lake Public School, Muskoday First Nation Public School and St Louis Public School- are in line for plenty of new books thanks to the Adopt-a-School program from the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation.

Indigo, Chapters and Coles stores across the nation are fundraising to help supply new books to almost 200 school libraries and the local schools stand to benefit in the coming weeks.

“Our book collection is quite lacking and old,” Student Support Services teacher at Christopher Lkae Public School Jody Harkness told paNOW. “So, in this day and age when technology is readily available to all our students it’s hard to compete with that, but getting new books is very exciting.”

Three Coles stores in Saskatoon will accept donations from customers and there is also an online component at adoptaschool.indigo.ca

Harkness said the children are doing their part to help as well.

“They’ve made bookmarks with ‘Just Read It’ written on them and those are being sold at the stores,” she said.

As of Friday the campaign appeared to be going along nicely for the school, with Harkness saying over 130 new books had been donated. The efforts are set to continue until Oct. 7.

The end goal she explained is to boost the content of new books for the kids to explore and to get them engaged in reading.

“Reading builds vocabulary, imagination and creativity and that then helps with all the other academic subjects, and that’s what we’re looking for,” she said.

St Louis Public School principal Jaret Nelson told the Indigo Foundation website the new books would be very welcome.

“The majority of our students are reluctant/struggling readers, and it’s hard to get them excited about reading when our library books are so outdated.”

Muskoday First Nation School was looking forward to the donation efforts as a way of diversifying their collection.

“Many of the books I have are of Aboriginal nature because of the culture content. I would like to buy new books of other genres as well,” said Principal Andrew DeBray

Editor’s Note: This story was updated Sept.24 to include other schools in the area that have been chosen for the program.

 

glenn.hicks@jpbg.ca

On Twitter:@princealbertnow