VILONIA -- After a tornado devastated the town of Vilonia in April, one middle-school boy walked up to his librarian and said, "All my books are gone."
His story was repeated throughout the Vilonia School District.
In the Vilonia Middle School alone, "We had almost 50 kids who lost homes," said Terina Atkins, the school's library and media specialist. "Some of the kids ... were some of our heaviest readers."
So when the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media called Atkins and asked how it could help, she suggested a book drive for the students. The result was "thousands" of books, so many she couldn't count them all, so many that some were shared with the Mayflower School District, where the April 27 tornado also struck.
The association put the word out after Atkins made the suggestion, and donations gradually began pouring in from schools throughout Arkansas. In nearby Conway, the University of Central Arkansas collected books for the effort, while other books came from as far away as Colorado, where Atkins' sister teaches.
"Some would send a box of books. Some would send carloads of books," said Atkins, whose library became the drop-off point before she and others sorted them by reading-age level and sent some to other schools in the district.
One school district alone sent 1,115 books to Vilonia. A few districts sent money so the students could order new books from Scholastic, a company that sells books and other educational materials, often through schools.
In addition to books, some schools sent bookmarks, tote bags and cards with kind thoughts written on them. One woman even sent bags she had made by hand, and children used them when they went "shopping" for the books laid out on tables the Vilonia School District libraries.
At first, Atkins rationed the books so that all of the children who had lost their homes could get their fair share. But she soon realized that there were going to be more than enough books for everyone, even some for children who didn't lose their homes, even some for preschoolers.
Some of the books were in Spanish for the district's Hispanic children. There were even blank journals for young writers.
"One kid told me he ended up with 85 books," Atkins said.
The books were mostly in excellent shape, with some of the titles among those most coveted by school-age children, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and the Harry Potter novels among them.
The sixth-grade boy who got more than 80 books was a huge fan of the Wimpy Kid series. "He was like, 'I found the last one. I found it. I'm complete!'" Atkins recalled, laughing.
Twelve-year-old Wyatt Barron, who will be in seventh grade this fall, said he got "probably around 40 or 50" of the donated books.
When the tornado flattened his family's house, Wyatt said, he lost his personal library of 70 or 80 books. But he found many of the titles he especially loved among the donated books.
Among his prized finds were four of the Wimpy Kid books, which he's now read two or three times, and a fantasy novel that sounds anything but wimpy: Dragon's Blood.
Wyatt, whose family is living in a rented house, said he's read more than usual since the storm.
"[Reading] would get our minds off things that were bad," he said.
Atkins said other children also seemed more interested in reading after the tornado. One reason might have been that youngsters whose homes were destroyed also had likely lost their video games, iPods and other electronics in the storm, she said.
But also, "I think [reading] probably provided a way for them to escape," she said, her voice halting as she wiped away tears. "If you're staying in a hotel, there's not a whole lot to do."
When students browsed the donated books, they called it shopping.
"It was almost like they were at the mall shopping," Atkins said.
Girls carried tote bags over their arms as they chatted and giggled with their friends.
And there was much excitement.
The young shoppers were like "sea gulls," Atkins said. "It was like a feeding frenzy."
Just as Atkins was trying to decide how to take so many books to the other Vilonia schools, along came a bus from Southside Middle School in Batesville. On board were "a ton of books" along with the student council and an all-girl builders club whose members took care of the deliveries.
"I was like, 'That was sent from God.' I call them my angels," Atkins said.
State Desk on 07/07/2014