Whoopi! Educator is giving away her winnings

PRINCESS ANNE

One of Heidi Magyar's favorite sounds is the crackle of a brand-new book's spine as it's opened for the first time.

It's a sound that the Parkway Elementary reading recovery teacher has been able to share nearly a thousand times over, thanks to Scholastic Book Clubs and celebrity Whoopi Goldberg.

Magyar was one of 100 national winners who, through the "Whoopi! We're Reading! Sweepstakes," sponsored by Scholastic's ClassroomsCare program, received 1,000 new books to give away.

Betsy Howie, Scholastic's manager of the ClassroomsCare program, said its mission "is to empower children through reading and put books into the hand of kids who need them."

In her 13th year as a reading recovery teacher at Parkway, Magyar works with students, individually and in groups, to strengthen reading skills.

At the beginning of the school year, she received a package from Scholastic announcing the contest. To enter, Magyar's students had to read 100 books. The book company included a poster to help them keep track.

"When we filled the poster, we let Scholastic know we'd read 100 books," Magyar said. She really didn't think about the contest much more after that.

In fact, when her name was announced on Goldberg's morning radio show, "Wake Up With Whoopi," in December, Magyar missed it.

"Two of our teachers heard it on the radio on the way to school that morning," Magyar said, adding that she received notification via e-mail the next day.

She and her students received the 20 boxes of elementary-, middle- and high-school-level books just before winter break. Though they started handing them out upon their return to school, they have 200 more to give.

"They're just wonderful, beautiful books," Magyar said. "The kids were just so excited."

Their biggest donation, approximately 350 books, was to REACH, a nonprofit network of volunteers who read aloud to children living in homeless shelters across Hampton Roads.

They've also donated to Parkway's boys' reading club, a pregnant teens' group and an after-school community tutoring group called United In Him, which is run by a former Parkway teacher, Vicki Stevenson.

Stevenson, 38, started United In Him in 2003 after 11 years as a fourth-grade teacher at Parkway. Her effort focuses on the community of Twin Canals and strives to provide support for families there, including the after-school program. Five boxes of books came to her.

"We use them for incentives," she said. "It's so exciting for them to receive a brand new book they can keep."

Scholastic's Howie said that, in the program's eight years, Scholastic Book Clubs has donated one million books each year with the help of its charity partners.

"With the 'Whoopi! We're Reading! Sweepstakes,' we wanted to give children the chance to see that they can make a difference in their own communities," Howie said, "that by reading they can make a difference."

Cyndi Kight, kightcw@yahoo.com