Windsor South Public School gets 550 brand-new books from Dymocks Children's Charities

Dymocks delivered $9000 worth of quality books to Windsor South on Monday, June 25, following a corporate donation of $4500 from Rest Super which the charity matched.

Assistant principal Carmen Hassan said the school puts a lot of the funds it can get its hands on into the library, but it had been lacking in certain areas - particularly novel sets for class reading - for some time.

“We’re very limited in funds here, so anything extra for the kids is great,” she said.

“They love the books and they’re being used not just for borrowing through the library, but as resources for class reading.

“[The donation] has updated and refreshed especially the class readers for the students in the higher classes, with good-quality literature.”

She said the kids had input into choosing which books were donated, and some of the most popular from the new offerings so far had been Roald Dahl and Tashi (a series of illustrated fantasy stories) titles, while the “older kids have been getting into A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French”.

She said reading Tashi books in class was “highly exciting” for the kids: “Having eight of the same text, we can now do it as a reading text for class.”

DCC’s Library Regeneration Program is about improving student literacy skills by offering a wide range of stories and promoting daily reading for pleasure.

The program targets school libraries in low socio-economic areas, and has also helped-out the students at Riverstone Public School in recent years.

Twenty-eight per cent of the student population at Windsor South is indigenous, and eight per cent have a language background other than english.

A spokesperson from DCC said the Windsor South students put in a huge wishlist of their favourite reads including picture books from Aussie authors Alison Lester and Aaron Blabey, much-loved classics by Roald Dahl and contemporary fiction from Wendy Harmer and Jackie French.

The school also requested reference books and class sets.