October 13, 2022

Thanks to the generosity of the Fairview Park community, students throughout the district will continue to learn the joy of reading.

Books-A-Million, located at Westgate Shopping Center, recently donated 262 books to the school district for student use, totaling $4,676.89. The donation resulted from the store’s recent Summer Book Drive, where community members purchased items supporting local students. This year, the Fairview Park City Schools was the lucky recipient.

According to Mary Jo Cooper, library media specialist at Parkview Early Education Center and Gilles-Sweet Elementary, the district provided the store with a “healthy” wish list of books to consider for donation.

“Since I am mainly at the Early Education building and Gilles-Sweet, I know a lot of the book titles that are popular with the kids,” Cooper said. “'Diary of a Wimpy Kid', 'Captain Underpants' and 'Elephant and Piggy' are super popular. Kids have them checked out all the time, so they’re getting worn out pretty quickly.”

The donation helps replenish the supply of well-used books and also helps increase the number of these popular books in circulation.

“So currently, for example, we have about ten copies of the 'Dog Man' series,” Cooper explained. “We also have about 600 kids at Gilles, so that’s not very many copies. Those copies are already gone with two or three classes in the library. The other 20 classes would like to have a chance to check those out. It definitely contributes to getting kids excited about reading.”

Not all donated books are for elementary-aged students. Many age-appropriate books will also go to the middle school and high school for classroom use and use at the library. Some books will also be used as incentives or for awards.

“The schools gave us a couple of titles that they wanted filled in, as well as several genres that are popular,” Katherine Heimel, general manager at Books-A-Million in Fairview Park expressed. “We try to get a pretty good variety of age ranges and genres donated.”

In addition to the 262 books donated this year, Books-A-Million also donated 473 books the year before, totaling $3,951.98. Over the past two years, the total number of books donated is 735, valued over $8,600.

“This is one of our favorite things we do every year,” Heimel expressed. “We love to have that connection with our community. We also love to have them come in and know that they are taking care of their kids and we are helping them do that.”

“It’s not just the bookstore that is doing it, it’s the community members as well,” Cooper stated. “Thank you to the manager and the bookstore associates, but also thank you to the community members who shopped at Books-A-Million. That was certainly some of our Fairview Park families and it’s definitely supporting the kids.”