Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

The story broke on Facebook this week … Manchester Elementary School in Pittsburgh’s Northside has less than 40 decent fiction books for the entire school.

The response has been swift. Yinzercation has written about it.

Within 24 hours, over 600 people had seen that original post and over 118 people had shared it on their own walls and with their networks. We started hearing from people all across the United States and even abroad who want to help. Boxes started appearing on Sheila’s porch and by last night over 80 brand new books had been ordered from the Amazon Wish List. That number is bound to explode today as word continues to spread on social media:

• Neil Gaiman, the mega-award winning English author ofThe Sandman, Coraline, and many other books and graphic novels, tweeted about this with a link to our original post;
• kids at another Pittsburgh public school donated gift certificates they had received for their own book fair;
• a teacher is taking up a collection in his room;
• businesses are sending around the notice on their internal mailing lists;
• a major local non-profit is interested in getting involved;
• Samaire Provost, a U.S. author, is sending two full sets of her Paranormal series geared for kids;
• A woman from Manchester in the U.K. wrote, “How’s your ancient literature (still fiction!) section? Every library should have one. … I’ll see what I can send over the pond.”

These are our children, my friends. Ledcat and I live in Manchester. Please help

Donations can be made via the school itself –

Pittsburgh Manchester PreK-8 (label packages for the Library)
1612 Manhattan Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15233

Or you can order a book via an Amazon wishlist – the list is in the name of one of the librarians, but will be delivered to the school.

Ironically, September 30-October 6 is National Banned Books week – bringing attention to issues around censorship in libraries, including school libraries.  Poverty is an effective censor.

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