A Phoenix school’s imperiled library needs your help

When I was a kid, I was always at the library. There, I would find incredible vehicles of transportation to other worlds: “A Wrinkle in Time,” “The Phantom Tollbooth,” Hans Brinker and his quest for those silver skates.

I’ve been thinking about my old friends, Ramona and Henry and Beezus, ever since I heard that students at William T. Machan Elementary School in Phoenix may find themselves locked out of the library this fall.

Federal cuts to Title I schools have forced Machan to lay off its library aide. Volunteers who work as reading tutors at the central Phoenix school say they were notified in May that the library will be closed next year.

“As a group, we felt very sad for the students,” one of the volunteers, Mark Landy, told me. “The library is the only source of reading materials for the majority of the student body.”

Once upon a time, before the recession and state budget cuts, Machan had a certified librarian. Now the K-8 school can’t even afford an aide.

Maybe you’re thinking, “So what? The public library is only a few miles away.” But it may as well be on Mars.

Machan is in a poor area. The median income is $26,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Many of the parents are immigrants who never made it past sixth grade, and virtually all of the students qualify for a free or reducedprice lunch. They don’t have books or internet access at home, and they certainly don’t have a way to get to the city library.

What they do have (or did have) was a school library that served not only as a resource, but as a refuge. Suzanne Luna, who ran the library, brought in guest speakers like Marshall Trimble, the state historian, and Alberto Rios, the state poet laureate. She organized book clubs and chess clubs and tutoring sessions. She collected bicycles from Every Kid Counts, a Scottsdale nonprofit, and gave them to the children who read the most books.

Machan Principal Julie Frost is determined that the library won’t close. She just doesn’t yet know how she’ll be able to keep it open.

Maybe teachers can check out books for their students, she says, or maybe volunteers can keep it going.

“I’m not going to let it happen,” Frost said. “Our library is too important to our students.”

The school’s volunteers don’t want it to happen, either. They’re hoping to raise the $15,000 it would take to keep the library open next year.

If you’d like to help, send a check — made out to Machan Elementary School Library — to Save Machan’s Library, 24 W. Camelback Road #A533, Phoenix, AZ 85013.

Landy says all checks will be refunded if the group doesn’t reach its goal.

Surely, there is a way to keep this library open. I can’t imagine growing up without “The Secret Garden” and “Charlotte’s Web” and “Little Women.” A world without “Stuart Little” and “Black Beauty”? Unimaginable.

Except, of course, to a child who doesn’t have access to a book.