With faces hovering slightly above the page and index fingers extended, only one question remained: Where's Waldo?
The three children in The Gift Family Resource Center's after-school program were able to ask this question because of Andrew Pacala, a 15-year-old Great Falls Eagle Scout.
The Gift Center is the product of an outreach program between Pacala's church, Emmanuel Presbyterian in McLean, and Garden Memorial in Anacostia.
Thus when it came time for him to organize and lead his Eagle Scout service project, addressing the needs of the Gift Center seemed logical.
"[The Gift Center] has a main emphasis on reading, so I thought it would be a good project to enhance their library and their books ... because they didn't really have sufficient books or any type of organization at all," Pacala said.
Therefore he decided to build three book shelves and collect 750 good, used children's books.
He got 5,262.
"There are a lot of books," said Gift Center program manager Maria Meredith, laughing. "Actually we're overflowing."
This has meant that in addition to after-school reading at the Gift Center, once a month children can take books home to build their own libraries.
"I get the feeling that the only resources they really have are the books we give them," Meredith said.
Fourth-grader Joy Green, who wants to teach "little kids" when she grows up, said she likes to read chapter books and has brought home "Junior B. Jones," "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" and "Full House."
After collecting the 5,000-plus books generated from placing ads in local papers and making announcements to his congregation, Pacala and 30 Scouts sorted literature by grade levels, kindergarten through sixth grade, setting aside works of Stephen King and AP study guides.
With the help of Mel Lynch, assistant scoutmaster of Troop 55, and 60 fellow Scouts, Pacala drew up plans for the shelves and oversaw their construction over a two-day period, delivering the shelves and books the following weekend.
Soon after the installation, he received a call from Meredith and more than 50 thank-you notes from the children.
One of the notes read, "Dear Mr. Andrew, Today I picked three books and I read it and I outlined some words in the book to and then I finished the first book and then I went to the second book. But the third one was not all that interested so I stop reading it and went to do something else."
Although the third book may not have been that interesting, thanks to Pacala the child now has thousands more to choose from.