Local man's book appeal goes viral
“Lots of encyclopaedias and some old history books that were never opened,” were the main reading options available in the library at a school in Dublin in September.
Now, however, thanks to an appeal launched by a Mullingar man, the school has received thousands of books, and the former drama room is now opened daily as a reading room for the fiction-hungry students, who are loving the transformation.
Teacher John Menton, originally from Hillside Drive, joined the staff of the 190-year-old O’Connell Secondary School in Dublin in April – and on discovering there wasn’t much reading material in the library to engage today’s teens, he set about launching an appeal for books.
John put out a request for donations on the Rick O’Shea Bookclub page on Facebook – and since the appeal went viral, with even Lenny Henry re-Tweeting the request – the result has been stunning.
“We have even had authors donating copies of their books for us!” says John, listing off Julia Donaldson, Michael Morpurgo (Warhorse), Wimpy Kid creator Jeff Kinney, Kieran Crowley, Dave Rudden, Darren Shan and Trevor Colgan as some of the writers who donated.
“The last day of term – December 22 – we were mid-way through an end of term reflection service with two of the local priests when I got word of a delivery,” says John.
He went to the school reception: “over 700 books had been dropped in!”.
In total, he estimates, between 2,500 and 3,000 books have been donated – most of them new, and some of them by very popular writers such as JK Rowling and Eoin Colfer.
“We have had boxes of book donations straight from O’Brien Press – all the way from their London office – and Penguin Random House, including many of Roald Dahl’s finest, which remain a firm favourite,” he said.
But it hasn’t stopped at that: Poetry Ireland has volunteered to arrange to have some of its poets visit the school for free; Penneys donated items, as did Hodges and Figgis and the IMC cinema.
John has been thrilled with how the appeal went: “I thought we would get a few dog-eared copies of books in,” he says, explaining that what actually happened was people made contact to ask what books the school wanted.
“I wrote out a list of possibilities and put it up on Facebook,” he says.
Many of the pupils in O’Connell School are not native English speakers, and an effort was made to ensure that as well as books suited to advanced Leaving Cert level students, there were books for English-learners, and for students who avail of resource hours.
That prompted some people to order books through Amazon for the school, and all of a sudden, John found himself dealing with an immense amount of books. Five other teachers came on board, along with 12 pupils, and they now handle all the books.
“We have received a variety of books for our ESL (English as a Second Language) students and others that challenge our high achieving Senior Cycle students,” says John.
“We have so many that we have even been able to put duplicate copies in some classrooms,” says John, who qualified in 2012 as a teacher of English and Religion from the Mater Dei teacher training college.
Following his graduation, he worked for a year at Southend in Britain, and then for two years in Yorkshire.
John loves working at O’Connell School, where he does resource teaching and also some career guidance while also continuing his professional education with a course at Trinity.
The son of retired nurse Ann and county council official John senior, John has fond memories of his own schooldays, which he spent at Presentation Junior School, St Kenny National School in Ballinea and then St Finian’s College in Mullingar.