ANAHEIM : Girl Scouts Pack Books for Troops

They might not have been bestsellers or classics, but thousands of books for entertainment-starved troops in Saudi Arabia have been packed for shipment by a dozen high school Girl Scouts.

The Anaheim Scouts got involved with “Booklift Desert Shield” when an Air Force captain stationed in Saudi Arabia, who is also a former Scout, wrote home and asked her sister to send her anything to help pass the time.

“My sister is always telling us how bored she is,” said Karen Bushnell, 23. “She says they throw rocks at water bottles for something to do.”

The Scouts spent Friday afternoon and Monday morning packing about 3,000 used school library books at the Anaheim Union High School District warehouse. The school district will haul the books to the Red Cross, which will ship them overseas.

Anna Turanitza, 16, one of the senior Scouts, said the troops are “pretty bored over there. Maybe this will help.”

District textbook controller Steve Ezell said the books being sent were not textbooks, but library books that are mostly outdated. He said the libraries at the junior and senior high schools have thousands of books stamped obsolete that students are just no longer interested in reading.

Forgotten titles, “Verity’s Voyage”--a historical romance novel, “Stars in My Pocket,” and “The Ship”--a 1943 ship captain’s tale--were a few of the offerings being packed Monday.

Bushnell said the books were mostly novels, and that the Girl Scouts followed strict military guidelines, avoiding books about politics, the military, religion or sex.

A few hobby-oriented books, such as those on cars and sports, were also in the shipment.

“There’s no sense in taking these things apart for their shredded value, when someone can get the value of reading them,” Ezell said.

Still Turanitza lamented some of the poor choices they were sending to entertainment-starved soldiers.

“I don’t think they’ll read all of them. I was reading some of them, and they were kind of boring,” she said.

But on the other hand, she agreed that something was surely better than nothing, especially for soldiers in a desert.

“It’s a pretty good cause,” she said.