Kindergarten class wins 1,000 books to donate
Monmouth Beach students distribute books to local charities

MONMOUTH BEACH - A kindergarten class in the borough has donated 1,000 books to local organizations and schools after winning a national sweepstakes sponsored by Scholastic Book Clubs.

Classrooms across the country were challenged by Whoopi Goldberg to read 100 books for the chance to win 1,000 books to be donated to local charities of the school's choice. Karen Ginty's kindergarten class at Monmouth Beach was named one of the winners of the sweepstakes.

"Our class read 100 books and now we have books to give to our favorite local charities," said Ginty.

On April 29, Ginty's kindergarten class donated their prize of 1,000 books to the Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Asbury Park, the SalvationArmy, St. John the Baptist Preschool and Linkages, an organization for homeless mothers and their children.

Ginty's class was one of 100 classes across the nation to win the prize out of more than 17,000 classes that entered the sweepstakes.

The prizewinners are participants in the Scholastic Book Clubs'ClassroomsCare program, a philanthropic literacy initiative that encourages reading with the promise that for every 100 books read by students across the country, 1,000 books will be donated from Scholastic to kids in need.

In October,Whoopi Goldberg joined the initiative and invited classrooms from across the country to join ClassroomsCare.

"ClassroomsCare is designed to empower students around the country to make a difference in the world," according to a press release from the Monmouth Beach school system.

The ClassroomsCare program distributes more than 1 million books each year. This year, ClassroomsCare extended its reach even further with the addition of 100,000 books being donated to countless organizations through the winners of the 'Whoopi! We're reading! Sweepstakes.'

"The students,Mrs. Ginty and I were so excited when we found out we won this sweepstakes," said Neil Frankenfield, principal and superintendent of the Monmouth Beach School. "We love ClassroomsCare and it's even better that we are able to donate the books we won to local charities.

"Our students have been reading a lot this year and now they're learning how special it is to give, especially to those less fortunate," Frankenfield said.

The ClassroomsCare initiative is open to all classrooms nationwide through Scholastic Book Club catalogs and the Scholastic Web site. Teachers and their students can visit www.scholastic.com/ClassroomsCare to track their reading progress online and to learn more about the organizations working with Scholastic Book Clubs to improve literacy.

More than 750,000 classrooms nationwide have participated in ClassroomsCare since its inception in 2002 andmore than 7 million books have been donated by Scholastic Book Clubs as part of the program.

In addition to encouraging increased reading in the classroom, the program has helped respond to tragedies and natural disasters, such as the tsunami in Indonesia and Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast, according to the release.

For 59 years, Scholastic Book Clubs have provided monthly catalogs offering top quality books and reading materials from all publishers to teachers and students in preschool through high school. Today, 11 different Scholastic Book Clubs reached over 1 million teachers each month, providing books at affordable prices for children in classrooms nationwide.

Scholastic Corp. is the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books and leader in educational technology.