In seven stories and a novella, Ed Hamilton takes on this clash of cultures between the old and the new, as his characters are forced to confront their own obsolescence in the face of a rapidly surging capitalist juggernaut. Ranging over the whole panorama of New York neighborhoods — from the East Village to Hell’s Kitchen, and from the Bowery to Washington Heights — Hamilton weaves a web of urban mythology. Punks, hippies, beatniks, squatters, junkies, derelicts, and anarchists ... searching for meaning and a place to make their stand.
Last year, families at The Neighborhood School on East Third Street (aka P.S. 363, aka TNS) found out that due to a perfect storm of craptastical budget crises on both the local and federal levels, the school had lost funding for its library. We now have to raise an additional $40K a year to keep our library and wonderful librarian Cheryl Wolf — no small feat for a school in which a third of the children qualify for free lunch and many more live just above the poverty line, and the PTA is already stretched to its limit.
So we're doing an online auction of children's book art to raise funds. Some of the amazing artists who’ve donated original paintings, prints and/or autographed books include Maira Kalman, Sophie Blackall, Paul O. Zelinsky, Mo Willems, Calef Brown, Betsy Lewin, Jaime Zollars, Javaka Steptoe (whose psychedelic portrait of Jimi Hendrix from Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow will thrill music fans), Betsy Lewin, Beth Krommes, Emily Arnold McCully, David Milgrim, Raina Telgemeier, Dave Roman and many more.
The auction runs though June 21. New items will be added regularly, and of course, straight-up donations can be made here — fully tax-deductible, as The Neighborhood School PTA, which funds the library, is a 501(c)3 charitable organization.
Why bother? Because research shows that having a school library and librarian is strongly correlated with student achievement, and the less wealthy the school, the stronger that correlation is. Our school also has one of the largest percentages of children with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) in our district, and Cheryl is a magician at reaching reluctant and emerging readers.
Our PTA is already stretched to its limit providing art, music, field-trip subsidies and supplies for students. That's why we're reaching out to the public. There’s nothing left to cut from the budget: In the last three years, we’ve cut our Reading Recovery program, our math coach, our literacy coach, our assistant principal, a school aide, all professional development contracts and our supplies budget, and we’ve increased class size in all grades. We don’t want to lose our library too!
Where can I donate used books in the East Village or Lower East Side? Some kid stuff, some adult stuff.
The NYPL will only take five books at a time for their fundraisers, and my kids' public school only has one fundraising book sale a year, and Project Cicero only wants new or very gently used kids' books (and only has one drive a year).
The books I have are really GOOD books, but they're not new. And I wanna purge now.
