FAIRVIEW, Ohio - As far as new Gilles-Sweet Elementary and Parkview Early Education Center Library Media Specialist Mary Jo Cooper is concerned, a school library without books is like a cafeteria without food.

That's why over the summer she requested and received an $8,000 Fairview Park Education Foundation gift to stock the Parkview Early Education Center library with new books. The school has 375 daycare-to-kindergarten-age students.

"When the district reconfigured the Early Education building, they didn't have a library," Cooper said. "We have some books that were shared or donated from one of the other elementary schools, but not enough to make a library."

Fairview Park Education Foundation President Denise Devine said the gift is on behalf of the Jan Arnett Memorial Library Fund.

"Ms. Arnett, a teacher in the district from 1965 to 1994, wished for all elementary students to have access to books to encourage a lifelong love of reading," Devine said.

Cooper said Parkview Early Education Center, which hasn't had a library since Gilles-Sweet Elementary opened a decade ago, had about 800 books with another 600 added this summer.

"We purchased books for a variety of reading levels and topics that meet the needs of the early childhood students," Cooper said. "While they did have access to books in their classrooms, giving kids a library opens up a new world to books.

"Reading ties everything together. The more access students have to books and listening to stories the more they will develop their love of reading and help them learn even more."

Cooper said she will be reading stories and teaching information literacy lessons to the kindergarteners this year. The idea is to develop literacy skills that increase their cognitive ability.

"I'm also going to provide books for the daycare and preschool kids to come and look at each week," Cooper said. "Their classroom teacher can then read stories each week that relate to the theme that they are studying."

Looking ahead, Cooper isn't done with the Early Education Center library.

"I'm probably halfway toward where I want to be," Cooper said. "I'll definitely try to get different grants and try to find many different means to try to get more books for the library."