On Monday of this week, when hurricane Sandy was screaming towards the New York City area, we got a call in the morning from a woman asking about our website. Kelly, my co-worker, started talking to Cara about how to navigate the website and in the course of the conversation, Cara shared that she was in Long Beach, N.Y., poised to get a solid hit from Sandy. Kelly helped Cara figure out where the Jason Chin books were on the website and wished her luck through the storm.
Later in the afternoon, when the winds were just starting to pick up in Vermont, Cara, a librarian at a Hasidic elementary school, called again. She ordered two books from Jason Chin. It seems that Jason had been to her school and done a great school visit. This is no surprise to me. We had Jason earlier in the year and he was great. (Here’s the post we did about his visit.) Cara’s problem was that two of the student-signed books were misspelled and she wanted to replace them.
When I spoke to Cara I asked where the school was and she said Long Beach. I asked about her weather and she said, “It’s horrible here. My school was under four feet of water from Irene, and this is worse.” She was calling on her cell phone because she had already lost power.
I couldn’t help but ask her why she was calling during a hurricane to place a book order. She laughed and said, “This order has been bothering me and I wanted to get it right. Plus, it keeps my mind off what’s happening.” I was stunned, but I understood. Her desire to get those books signed correctly seemed to symbolize hope. If the books were signed properly and back in the kids; hands, all would be well. Cara just had to get the process rolling before she could relax.
I haven’t had a chance to connect with Cara since Monday, but I’ll keep trying and let everyone know how she and her school fared in the storm. Here’s hoping she’s okay and she and New York get back to normal very soon.