Martha Hereford-Cothron. Or Miss H-C as she’s known, said reading gives her students a chance to escape.
“They're in a land of make believe and they are having a good time, while they are there,” she said.
Her classroom at Dunedin Highlands Middle School is packed with books.
But after it was used as a hurricane shelter, she discovered many of those books were gone.
“This is where I had my Veronica Roth books, my Amy Harmon books, and JK Rowling,” she said, pointing to an empty shelf.
Miss HC said about 50 books are missing.
All that was left on the shelf was a blanket and an empty box that held the popular Divergent series.
“Whoever has them. I just hope they are reading them,” she said.
But now her class might end up with more books than they had before.
She posted a note on Facebook about the possible theft and parents, strangers, even a local bookstore started donating.
“The kids got super excited about the Percy Jackson series that came in,” she said.
Her post was shared more than 1,000 times so far.
Some of the famous authors saw it and are sending books too.
“It’s pretty cool that people like to help,” said 7th grader Joshua Skaling.
“It kind of hurts your heart a little bit. But I kinda spun it for my students and made them realize that obviously God needed someone to have those books for a reason. So they have books now. I hope they are happy,” said Hereford-Cothron.
The Pinellas School district said they’ll replace anything that was stolen.
But no matter what, nothing is going to stop these kids from doing what they love to do: read!
See the Amazon wish list for the class here.
