Loriene Roy remembers a group of kids from Jemez Pueblo who attempted to greet the librarian in her Anishinaabe language.

The New Mexico students said, "Boozhoo! Boozhoo!"

"Do you know me? Do we know each other?" said the faculty member from the University of Texas at Austin.

The first-graders, who belong to a national reading program for Indian students, replied, "You read us a book last year."

Roy, project director for "If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything," started the reading club to encourage kids to read for fun. At the same time, her organization promotes library use at Indian schools and helps improve school library collections with books that can empower indigenous youth.

"It's a wonderful program," said Karen Brown Letarte, president of the American Indian Library Association. "Loriene chooses the books and provides fun things and works with teachers and finds books that positively portray Native people. There is a real dearth of quality books."

Roy is always looking for a good book. She will be in Seattle today through Thursday during the American Library Association's midwinter conference when the organization announces the top books and videos for children and young adults - including the Caldecott, King, Newbery and Printz awards. The ALA, which has close to 65,000 members, will provide a live webcast of the awards at 9:45 a.m. Monday

Roy, an Anishinaabe from White Earth, Minn., will be inaugurated in June as the first American Indian elected as president of the ALA.

She's currently organizing an event she's calling the Gathering of Readers, a take on one of the country's largest powwows, the Gathering of Nations. The Gathering of Readers is scheduled to take place in April 2008, which will culminate as an international online gathering of indigenous children's reading and culture.

It will coincide with the 50th anniversary of National Library Week.

Reading, said Roy, should be "a lifelong enjoyment and hobby and necessary task."

So far, 29 Indian-based schools in nine states participate in the "If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything," program. Schools can become a member if they have a library, a librarian "and some way to keep in touch with us," said Roy.

Schools are rewarded in several ways, depending on their needs. The club collects books, which are sent to schools. It only accepts new books from donors, with few exceptions. Used copies of "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," and its sequel, are always in demand.

Brenda DeHaan is a librarian at Andes Central School on South Dakota's Yankton Reservation where students have been involved with the reading club for about three years. The "If I Can Read" program supplied "Charlotte's Web" books so the school's students could participate in a national reading contest.

South Dakota youth also are preparing to be a part of Read Across America on March 2. DeHaan has a few ideas to share with book club members, whom she refers to as "a network support group."

Besides providing books and "fun doodads" like flashlights, pens and bookmarkers, the national Indian reading program also is a friend to librarians, said Laura Sierra-Parks of the Taos Day School in New Mexico.

Roy recently provided two college graduate students to work for a sick librarian for an entire semester.

"Reading is baseline," said Sierra-Parks, who also is a second-grade reading teacher. "Kids are in school so much of their childhood, if they don't succeed on some level in school, their whole self-esteem, sense of future and what kind of person they are is really weak. If they are a successful reader, they are a much happier person.

"Plus they love to sit down and go into the world of whatever book they have in front of them. It's a lovely gift. And it has a pretty powerful influence."

(Reporter Jodi Rave can be reached at 800-366-7186 or at jodi.rave@;lee.net.)