Doris Leiber is named March Volunteer of the Month. 
Doris, who hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, was Judith F. Krug’s aunt and mother of co-founder Scott Leiber. Every year when she visits the Leiber clan she volunteers at Judith’s Reading Room. In April, 2013, Judith’s Reading Room honored Doris by agreeing to ship 50 new and gently-read children’s books every other month to the Canandaigua, New York VA hospital. The hospital reached out to the organization because they said they were seeing many young vets with children, who had nothing to read in the waiting rooms. Dedicating these shipments to Canandaigua was a natural because Doris is a native New Yorker, a veteran of WW II and a mother of five! Doris, a member of the Greatest Generation and Navy veteran, WWII, where she served as a WAVE based in the Bay Area, will turn 91 in August. Thank you, Doris, for your service to our country and to Judith’s Reading Room!
Category: News
Grant awarded from the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation
Judith’s Reading Room is pleased to announce that they have been awarded a $5000 grant from the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation. This grant specifically supports Judith’s Reading Room’s Birth-2-Five Program. The Lehigh Valley Community Foundation promotes philanthropy in order to improve the quality of life in the region. The check will be presented by Lehigh Valley Community Foundation at Judith’s Reading Room’s Annual Board meeting.
The Birth-2-Five Program provides literacy outreach to the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) programs in the Lehigh Valley, PA. The partnership with WIC reaches children from birth to 5 years of age who
- come from families of inter-generational poverty,
- are not registered in traditional learning programs, and
- do not have ready access to books,
which causes them to start school not ready to learn.
To address these educational gaps, we build each child’s first home library and supply bi-lingual read-aloud educational materials that proactively engage parents.
Since its inception in February 2013, the Birth-2-Five Program has reached over 5,000 children in the Lehigh Valley. Over 5,000 Parent’s Pledges, a vow to read aloud for twenty minutes daily, have been collected and 8,138 books have been distributed to children at the WIC offices.
For more information on the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation, please visit them at www.lvcfoundation.org.
Books Filling a Gap in an Educational Crisis!
Two Philadelphia-based Boys & Girls clubs are the recipients of 750 new books from Judith’s Reading Room, a nonprofit literacy organization in Bethlehem, Pa.
Cathy Leiber, who cofounded Judith’s Reading Room with her husband Scott, delivered the two mobile library carts to the Wissahickon Boys & Girls Club at 328 W. Coulter St., Philadelphia on Monday, Dec. 23 in advance of a 2 p.m. dedication. The Germantown Boys & Girls Club will also receive a cart.
The books will be used in the club’s Literacy Program, says Libby Lescalleet, executive program officer. “The more access to books we provide for our kids, the more opportunities they have to dream big,” she says, noting the two facilities serve about 400 youth.
Lescalleet says a focus of the Boys & Girls Club is to augment public education by providing strong literacy and STEM (Science Technology and Math) programs for the population it serves.
“There’s such an education crisis in our schools we need to fill some of those gaps for our kids,” she says. In addition to the two libraries, which are valued at more than $7,350, Judith’s Reading Room is providing 50 new children’s books for the elementary students who attend the Boys & Girls Club. Leiber will hand them out after the dedication to the students who are present.
The libraries are being donated in honor of Maya Polack, a teacher who graduated from St. Joseph’s University.
Sunday’s Morning Call Feature
Today’s Sunday Morning Call feature! Judith’s Reading Room spreads the ABC’s of literacy! A great article!
Judith’s Reading Room has come a long way since its origins in Scott and Cathy Leiber’s Williams Township home.
Not very long geographically, mind you. It is now headquartered in a modest back office on East Third Street in south Bethlehem.
But the books that are its reason for being — the whole spectrum of literature from “Amelia Bedelia” to “Zombie Apocalypse” — have made their way from that nondescript spot to Mazer-Sharif in Afghanistan and Korce in Albania and Padang in Indonesia and a host of other places hardly anyone could pinpoint on a map.
They have also landed closer to home, at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital, St. Luke’s KidsCare and many other institutional settings: children’s homes, veterans hospitals, senior centers.
Judith’s Reading Room Expands to China
On October 31, Judith’s Reading Room announced the opening of its first library in mainland China to serve schools in a remote and impoverished region of Yunnan Province. The organization was contacted by Frances Deram, an American teacher affiliated with the non-profit Teach for China. Her compelling plea to send children’s books in English to help close the gap of education inequality in China resonated with the organization, whose mission is to enrich lives by providing books to those who do not have access to them.
Ms. Deram said, “the majority of our students do not have money to buy new clothes, much less books outside of the required curriculum. For the first time, students will be able to look beyond their English textbook and see the world from another country’s perspective.” Teach for China is a non-profit organization that recruits and trains the most talented and dedicated young leaders from China and the USA to place Fellows in low-income schools as full-time educators for two years.
Judith’s Reading Room has opened 58 libraries in three years containing 62,687 books worth nearly $640,000. In addition to China, the organization has opened libraries in 10 countries outside the United States –Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Albania, Costa Rica, Cambodia, Japan and Namibia.
The organization depends heavily on gently-read book donations from members of the local community. Recently four teenagers conducted book drives which resulted in the collection of nearly 4,000 books. Jared Fantasia, a junior at Northampton Area High School, whose book drive brought in 2,871 books, requested that all of his children’s books be shipped to schools in China.
Books provided by Judith’s Reading Room to Teach for China, will be used for two main purposes: free reading for outside the classroom and supplemental texts to be used in class, according to Ms. Deram. She added, “my goal is to have a lasting English impact at our school.”
Celebrating Banned Books Through Dance
Sept. 26, 2013 “The Emotive Powers of Literature: Celebrating Banned Books Through Dance. A Banned Book Week event, an event presented by Judith’s Reading Room at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA The event, created in collaboration with Muhlenberg’s Six Meters improvisational dance ensemble, focused on Persepolis and 40 other books that have been banned and challenged. Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi’s award-winning graphic novel that was removed from Chicago Public School classes earlier this year.
Bryn Mawr Book Donation!
Staff and administrators at Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital on Malvern PA collected and donated 787 children’s books. The books will go to families with children under the age of 5 where there are no books in the home and to US troops serving at Camp Phoenix in Kabul where they give books to village elders as “peace offerings”.
Five Additional Libraries in East Java
Judith’s Reading Room continued their collaboration with The World is Just a Book Away by opening an additional five (5) libraries in East Java, Indonesia each containing 100 children’s books in English. The two organizations have now opened 17 libraries together in that country
Judith’s Reading Room Opens Libraries in Japan & Namibia
Judith’s Reading Room opens two new libraries this week in Japan and Namibia.
Marine Moms contacted Judith’s Reading Room to request books for their sons stationed in Japan. Lcpl Gray Parish announced the opening of a Judith’s Reading Room lending library for his fellow Marines at a base in Japan. He carved space out of his quarters to house the boxes of books volunteer “Boxers” have sent his way. Since September 2010, Judith’s Reading Room has shipped 1,600 books to Marines in Iran, Afghanistan, the Republic of Georgia, Japan Guam and the Philippines.
A newspaper article about Judith’s Reading Room’s work around the world inspired members of a New Jersey church to contact the organization to help one of their members, a Peace Corps volunteer at Schlip Primary School in Rehoboth, Namibia, stock its deteriorating library.
In Rehoboth, south-central Namibia, a library of children’s elementary books arrived thanks to a collaborative effort between Judith’s Reading Room and members of the Flemington Baptist Church. Until now, the school did not have the resources to provide English books before fifth grade. Schlip serves 150 children from kindergarten to grade 7. English is Namibia’s official language but the people of Rehoboth speak either Africaans or Khoekhoegowab, a “clicking” language. Judith’s Reading Room’s donation of 269 books will offer children the chance to learn English starting in kindergarten.
Sunday school children at Flemington Baptist Church in New Jersey undertook a book drive and reached out to Judith’s Reading Room to supplement their collection. They also raised funds to help offset the cost of shipping books.
USS George W.H. Bush chaplain and library staff with the brand new drone
Judith’s Reading Room was just sent this photo of the chaplain and library staff with the brand new drone on board the USS GEORGE W.H. BUSH. 
These are the soldiers who handle the books that we ship to the aircraft carrier each month.
If you were watching the news this week, you would have seen live footage of the USS GEORGE H.W. BUSH (CVN 77) – the aircraft carrier where Judith’s Reading Room has TWO libraries on board! The carrier is the first to have a spectacular unmanned drone aircraft able to fly at night and in extremely dangerous circumstances, without, obviously, risking the lives of pilots.