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In the spirit of the holiday season, Barnes & Noble has partnered with the Picard Center for Child Development and Lifelong Learning for its annual Holiday Book Drive to give the gift of literacy to the surrounding community.

The Barnes & Noble Holiday Book Drive is an annual program that provides customers with the opportunity to purchase a book for donation and give it to a child in the community.

The 2009 book drive begins Nov. 1 and runs through Jan. 1, 2010.

Each year, Barnes & Noble selects a local non-profit organization to distribute the books directly to the children. The Picard Center for Child Development and Lifelong Learning at the University of �޻���ֱ�� at Lafayette is the recipient organization for this year’s Holiday Book Drive.

“ The gift of literacy lasts a lifetime," said Lafayette store manager Drew Zeigler. "The Holiday Book Drive allows our customers to share that gift with children who need it the most. We're so pleased to work with the Picard Center to get books into the hands of children.”

The Picard Center, a research and evaluation center, is the official evaluator of the state’s nationally renowned early childhood program, known as the Cecil J. Picard LA 4 prekindergarten program.

The books donated by Barnes & Noble customers will be evenly divided among the nine LA 4 sites in Lafayette Parish, which serve more than 800 4-year-old students:

• Truman Montessori
• Katharine Drexel Elementary
• Green T. Lindon Elementary
• Ernest Gallet Elementary
• J. Wallace James Elementary
• Alice Boucher Elementary
• J.W. Faulk Elementary
• Evangeline Elementary
• Prairie Elementary

“ We are very excited about being selected to serve in partnership with Barnes & Noble to improve childhood literacy this holiday season. The LA 4 students in Lafayette Parish are the perfect recipients for these books,” said Dr. Billy R. Stokes, Executive Director of the Picard Center. “We appreciate that Barnes & Noble recognizes the importance of giving kids an early start in reading. Our research has shown that the earlier children are exposed to books and the more opportunities they are given to interact with literature, the greater their abilities to become future fluent readers.”

The LA 4 program began in 2001 to serve �޻���ֱ��’s neediest 4-year-old children – those identified as being at risk for academic failure, based on economic or special needs. The program is offered at no cost for those children eligible for Free or Reduced Price Lunch services (FRL). Children not qualifying based on income may still enter the program by paying tuition. The high-quality prekindergarten program has a rich history of improving participants’ academic performance, while reducing kindergarten retention and special education placement rates.

“ Our students continually benefit from the numerous partnerships we have, and this is a prime example of our community’s willingness to help our students,” said Superintendent Burnell Lemoine. “We want to thank Barnes & Noble and the Picard Center for their efforts in providing books for our children. This may be the only book that some of our children will have.”

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), a Fortune 500 company, is the world’s largest bookseller and the nation’s highest-rated bookselling brand. The company’s operations comprise of retail bookselling, college bookstore management, online retailing and book publishing. As of October 2009, the company operates 774 retail bookstores in regional shopping malls, major strip centers and freestanding locations in 50 states and 624 college bookstores, serving nearly 4 million students and over 250,000 faculty on college and university campuses in 50 states. General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: .

The Picard Center, named in honor of former State Superintendent of Education Cecil J. Picard, is dedicated to providing high-quality research and strategic evaluations of programs that address learning from birth through adulthood and investigates ways to bring scientifically-based research to bear on public policy in all areas of child education, health and quality of life. The Center awaits the development of its new 22,000 square-foot building, to be built within two years at a cost of approximately $7.2 million in the University of �޻���ֱ�� at Lafayette’s Research Park.