An English teacher at Holy Names Catholic High School has teamed up with one of her former students with a great idea to promote their shared love of books.

Hailey LeBlanc, who recently earned an Honours B.A. in English Literature from the University of Windsor, graduated from Holy Names in 2013. Trying to establish herself as a literary critic, she has created a video blog where she talks about her favourite books.

Her YouTube channel Hailey in Bookland already has more than 190,000 subscribers, so publishing houses send her a lot of review copies to critique.

Wondering what to do with all those extra books, she got in touch her former English teacher Daniella Czudner, who had found an old shelving unit at a garage sale. She brought it home, had some new shelves cut for it, and got her son to paint it.

Czudner brought the new shelf into her school, put it outside her second floor classroom and stocked it with all the books that were donated by LeBlanc. She was pleasantly surprised by the results.

“It was crazy how quickly the books started flying out of here,” she said, noting that the books are free for students with no expectation that they’ll be returned.

“Books are expensive,” added LeBlanc, “and unfortunately they’re becoming a bit of a luxury item. I just wanted to get books into the hands of young people and hope that it will inspire a love for reading like it did for me.”

Spotted in WECDSB is a feature that focuses on people in our system who go out of their way to do something innovative to enhance the student experience. If you know someone who should be featured, send an e-mail with some details to [email protected]