Delivery Day at Fairview Elementary!

For five weeks beginning Oct. 25, I held a giveaway to help a Denver area elementary school in need that I called, The Great Library Giveaway.

I'd set aside 300 books from reviewing for the contest, knowing that many schools in the area were facing budget cuts and could use books to fill a shelf or two in their libraries.

In my heart, I imagined the winning school being a place where the books would mean the most, where resources are sparse, life doesn't come easily and books are treasured.

But after the contest began, I realized that the giveaway might not reach the very people I'd most wanted to help.

Less affluent communities wouldn't have easy access to computers and the Internet, and thus could be at a significant disadvantage entering the contest.

What I didn't anticipate was the tenacity and spirit of Fairview Elementary School, a fiercely proud little school in Denver's most impoverished neighborhood.

In a week's time, Fairview came up from behind and not only won the contest, but by more than 50 votes.

So worried they'd lose their lead against the other 13 schools that entered, the staff, volunteers, families and friends at the school kept voting even after their win seemed secure.

And as I discovered while delivering the books a week after Thanksgiving, this is a school that doesn't take anything for granted.

The Great Library Giveaway

Where the Best Books Are! will donate 300 books to a Denver, Colo., area school library in a giveaway beginning today!

The Great Library Giveaway runs through Mon., Nov. 22, and is open to public elementary schools in 16 local school districts.

With so many schools hit by budget cuts, Where the Best Books Are! hopes this donation will go a little way to help fill shelves and spur more ways to give back to schools.

All of the books in the giveaway were sent to Where the Best Books Are! for review purposes by these great children's publishers:

Abrams, Bloomsbury, Candlewick Press, Charlesbridge, Chronicle, Blue Apple Books, Disney-Hyperion, D.K. Publishing, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin, Imagine!, Kingfisher, Nomad, Peachtree, Penguin, Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Sleeping Bear, Sterling and Tundra.

Among the highlights: Ingrid Law's Scumble, Over the Rainbow illustrated by Eric Puybaret with a 3-song CD by Judy Collins, The Night Before Christmas performed by Peter, Paul and Mary, and illustrated by Puybaret, Tammi Sauer's Mostly Monsterly, J. Patrick Lewis's Kindergarten Cat and Tad Hills's How Rocket Learned to Read.

Anyone can enter a Denver-area school in the giveaway, whether you live in-state or not -- school staff, district administrators, families of students, friends, etc.