Can you help our friends in Melbourne, Australia? I hope so!
Imagine opening a brand new library and then a couple of months later watch it be destroyed in a storm. That’s what happened on Christmas Day in Melbourne.
While we were enjoying our Christmas Day here in the Seattle area, one of our blogging buddies was dealing with a library disaster. On Christmas Day in Melbourne Australia, a terrible storm thundered through the city. Flash floods, hailstones the size of tennis balls, tornadoes and pelting thunderstorms pummeled the city.
St. Martin of Tours Primary School in the northeast section of Melbourne was hit especially hard. About 4 inches of rain (96 mm) came down in a hour and overwhelmed the gutter system on the ceiling of the brand-new library media center. The water backed up and the weight collapsed the ceiling over the picture book section and office area of the library.
Forty brand new books waiting to be catalogued and placed into the library were destroyed. The S-Z picture book section was a sopping mess. You can read more about the damage and see a movie of the clean up on Miss Yeomans’ LRC blog.
So how can you help? Our friends may be many miles away from us physically, but they are readers just like us. They love books and when they come back to school they are going to need books to read. I thought it might be a great idea if our blogging friends sent them a favorite picture book.
I am going to buy a book this week and put it in the mail. Perhaps you could do the same and by the time school opens, the students at St. Martin our Tours Primary School will have new books to read. Please share this with your friends and fellow bloggers! A librarian friend is in need and we can help!