WMS students give books to Bush Children's Hospital by Michelle Libby

Photo by Michelle Libby

The Windham Middle School cafeteria was packed with second-graders, seventh-graders and grandparents on Tuesday morning as Pam Mallard and Lisa Hodge’s seventh grade class celebrated their collaboration to collect books for the library at The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital with students in Gail Small and Elaine Hawthorne’s classes.

Abby Snyder, a teacher for children in the children’s hospital, attended the celebration and received 148 books. “I can’t stress how important it is to have good books for the kids to read. It’s great to get lost in a great story. There’s nothing I like more than looking through a story with a kid and letting them get lost in their story.”

Snyder then told the students about a girl who was in a skiing accident a few weeks ago and is still unresponsive, except when someone reads her a book.
“You should be really, really proud of your hard work,” Snyder told the students.
In addition to the presentation of the books collected in the year-long project, and seventh-grader Annie Denbow, sang “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera a cappella, the students interviewed the grandparents in the crowd asking them questions like “When you were in second grade, what kinds of books did you read? What happened when you were naughty? Did you have TVs in your home?”  Finally, a large group of students co-read a poem to honor the grandparents.

In past years, the middle school students have collected cans for the Windham Food Pantry and sent Christmas cards to the troops overseas. This year they followed the journey of a pre-schooler who was waiting for a heart transplant and the students decided to collect books for the hospital library. The project was spearheaded by Darren Emerson and Skylyn Vokey, according to Mallard.