By Lisa Crockett; photo courtesy of Carla Kenny
Spring cleaning and good reading go hand in hand in Castle Pines. For the fourth year in a row, residents convened at a “book swap” event sponsored by the Castle Pines North Master Association. Ten volunteers spent nearly four hours sorting and arranging more than 1,500 books the day before the late-April event.
“I heard over and over again from so many different people at the event that they are glad we do this every year,” said Carla Kenny, the vice president of the Castle Pines Chamber of Commerce and the chairperson of the book swap. “It’s always such a great event.”
More than 250 people attended to gather new reading material and enjoy the company of friends and neighbors. At the end of the day, leftover books went to a good cause. Some of the surplus went to the Goodwill donation center in Castle Pines. Others were collected by two local students, 12-year-old Brooke Andel and 15-year-old Megan Pittman.
Pittman took her books for use at South Elementary in Castle Rock and Andel donated her collection to the African Library Project. Andel’s books were added to donations she had solicited in other locations as part of a school project at DCS Montessori school. In total, she shipped 1,200 books, enough to start a small school library in Sierra Leone.
“Brooke did this as an empowerment project at school,” said Brooke’s dad, Scott Andel. “She learned that a lot of schools in Africa have just chalk and a chalkboard and not a single book. She wanted to help people less fortunate.”
