“I love to read,” one Fair Oaks Elementary School student declared loudly and excitedly before picking up a bag of books donated by the community. Another student leaped in the air while walking the red carpet toward the table of books that awaited him. Once they had their bags of literary adventures, the Fair Oaks students found a spot on the carpet inside their school’s media center and eagerly began exploring the new additions to their home libraries. 
Every student at Fair Oaks took home a free bag of five books donated by the local metro-Atlanta community. In all, Atlanta News First passed out 3,855 books to eager readers.
“A BIG thank you to Atlanta First News and the Books to Kids program! With the generosity of all donors, our students received the gift of books for the holiday season. We couldn’t be more appreciative of our community bringing together our students to promote reading literacy,” said Principal Cathie Seibert.
Inside the bag of books, 5th grader Camilla found one of her favorite books, “Don’t Judge Me.” She had lost her original copy before she got a chance to finish. Thanks to the donation event, she has another chance to finish the book and is looking forward to doing just that over the holiday break.
In addition to the free books, Fair Oaks students were thrilled for the opportunity to meet the reporters from Atlanta News First. At least one student even requested autographs.
“I was very excited that I got to see the [news reporters] because it has been my dream to be on the news,” shared David, a Fair Oaks 5th grader.
Some of the Fair Oaks students also had story time with author Laurel Snyder who autographed her books donated to the students.
If you ask their school media specialist, Lori Quintana, Fair Oaks students are such hungry readers that their school ranks as having one of the highest book checkout rates of any elementary school in Cobb Schools. In fact, since the start of the school year, Fair Oaks students have checked out more than 9,324 books! That number does not include the books students curl up to read from the school’s Little Free Library, which is available even when school doors are closed.
“I think [reading is] important because you’ll get a lot of information from books, and you’ll be able to entertain yourself with sometimes fiction books and sometimes learning about [all] type of things,” Camilla explained.
David recognizes how reading helps him in school and will be important in his future career.
“Reading will help me with writing [for] broadcasting, and it will help me reading the passages in class,” David said.
Camilla has already seen how her school’s focus on reading is having an impact on her. Camilla was proud to share how her reading score had increased.
