Different is Not Bad, Different is Our World

Let me give you a bit of a background about me. I am a bibliophile. I love to read, and I love books. My mother and I recently attended a church free sale, in hopes of finding a few pair of jeans for my extremely tall and skinny boys. No such luck, but the church was also giving away toys and assorted household items. We wandered around for a bit, avoiding the horde around the toy table, and I stumbled upon a room full of books. The lady who worked there assured me that yes; they were giving away the books, too. There was no one else in sight. I am of the ilk that a book not read is a tragedy, and so I began gathering books. There were Newberry award winners, Caldecott books, even a few textbooks. I needed a cart to leave the church.

Fast forward a week and I am at the Ozarks Literacy Council, searching for materials that will help me teach a 6th grade dyslexic student that I tutor how to read. The Literacy Council works with children and adults, and out of their library they had no books directed towards dyslexia. My children’s library alone is larger than their library, and while I am responsible for teaching my three children to read, they serve the entire city of Springfield. Dyslexia affects 1 person out of 5. ONE in FIVE!! Yet, they had no resources for dyslexia.

They did, however, have in a back room, collecting dust, three boxes of Science curriculum. They had entire sets, Teacher’s Edition, Student Edition, and workbooks, activity books, and resources for the REAL Science series, grades K, 1, 2, and 5. They were donated last year, and no one wanted them. BRAND NEW 2006 TEXTBOOKS and no one wanted them. There were other books there, too, Holt, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Scott Foresman, Houghton Mifflin, all brand new, never used. After my long search for secular science curriculum I could afford and coming up with nothing (these books are $300 a set, per year) they now accompany a shelf in my home. They will be put to good use here, but it still strikes me with disbelief that no one wanted them.

I used to be an Usborne consultant. I wanted to share my love of books with the world. That dream went up in smoke while at a vendor fair, watching family after family drop hundreds of dollars on cosmetics and Tupperware while telling their children they could not afford the $6 book their child had chosen off my shelf.