Last weekend the church had a book drive for three inner city schools in our area. These schools contained either all elementary or all middle school grades but for the next school year they are adding either elementary or middle school grades to each.

The dilemma, of course, is that the elementary schools have only lower grade resources in their media center and the middle schools have only upper grade resources.

A thinking person would make the assumption that tax money would be available to stock the libraries in these schools with appropriate level books. In fact, that statement makes so much sense that it boggles the mind to find out that this is not the case.

Even with our high-sounding "No Child Left Behind" policy and our value that 'reading is fundamental' we have completely abandoned the very educators that are on the front line of making this happen and tied their hands by leaving them out of the budget. I am appalled. And very disappointed. And will hasten to add that other schools within the district do have budgets for books.

Where is the hew and cry for a level playing field for our inner city kids? Where are those advocates who will stand up and shout, "Foul" to an unfair policy like this?

Okay, I'm done....

Except to say that through the efforts of my daughter, and the resource center director at the church, and the two media personnel in these inner-city schools, over the week end hundreds and hundreds of age-appropriate books were donated, new and gently used, fiction and non-fiction, to the schools.

It was delightful to watch the above mentioned four women sort through books, dividing them up between the schools, pausing often to muse over the story in one book or another. There is something very refreshingly honest about the kinds of people who love children and books. Listening to them read Shel Silverstein's poetry or exclaim over the newest series of Hardy Boys mysteries took me back to when my children were young. My favorite poem then and now is one of Shel's:

There's too many kids in this tub
There's too many elbows to scrub
I just washed a behind
that I'm sure wasn't mine
There's too many kids in this tub.

And that's what I think about it.