A teenager collected thousands of books to help Ventura County children who were victims of the Thomas Fire.
Fifteen-year-old Lydia Kresin who lives in Santa Monica heard about the devastating Thomas Fire and wanted to help the children who were impacted.
“I kept thinking about how much kids are probably missing their favorite books and how nice it would be for others to share their favorite books with those kids. And that’s how the book drive started,” she says.
Kresin was surprised at how many new and gently used books she was able to collect.
“In our living room, we put them out on the floor – all 3,000 of them. The whole entire floor was covered. You couldn’t even walk by,” she says.
Kresin’s book drive inspired another book drive that collected 1,200 books. The more than 4,000 books were donated to the Ventura County Library. A third will be added to the library’s collection. Another third will be given to kids for the summer reading program and the final third will be donated to Friends of the Library groups for book sales.