READING: The ABCs of Helping Youngsters...

Jumping up and down and clapping her hands, 6-year-old Yasmine Hernandez could barely contain her excitement when the purple and red bus arrived at Allesandro Elementary School near Elysian Heights in Los Angeles.

“Yes! Yes!” she squealed, standing in line with her classmates to board the brightly colored bookmobile, a traveling library that visits her school every three weeks.

After the line inched ahead, Yasmine squeezed into a packed, 5-foot-wide aisle where she and her friends each picked a few books. Then, they retreated to a tree-shaded part of the parking lot to read.

For these students at Allesandro Elementary, which is not within walking distance of any public libraries, the bookmobile is their only access to a library outside school.

“It’s an excellent service for the school. I can’t say enough about it,” said Paula Grace, a second-grade teacher. “I wish it would come more often. But everybody does.”

Stocked with 3,500 books, this bookmobile is one of four Los Angeles Public Library system bookmobiles that provide access to schools and community centers throughout the city that do not have local public libraries within a mile.

The Los Angeles County library system has three bookmobiles, concentrating on the Antelope Valley, the Santa Clarita Valley and the Las Virgenes area.

For some students who lack transportation, bookmobiles provide the only opportunity to visit a public library and to develop a relationship with books outside school, said Grace.

“They love it,” she said. “They get to check out so many books at one time that it’s like a kid in a candy store.”

Bookmobiles have provided an outreach service to communities in Los Angeles since 1949, when they became available for the city and county library systems.

Now, 50 years later, bookmobiles are still in demand in Los Angeles and nationwide, with the only real change having been in the vehicles themselves.

“It’s our mission to be responsive to the communities we serve,” said Michael Eisenberg, the city system’s area manager for the western San Fernando Valley.

In the year that ended in July 1998, the city’s bookmobiles circulated 338,331 books at schools, community centers, senior citizen homes and public housing developments, said Leslie Nordby, assistant director of the Los Angeles Public Library.

In the less densely populated areas covered by the county system, the bookmobiles last year had a circulation of about 122,000 volumes.

Bookmobiles, usually staffed by one librarian and a driver, work four days a week and make two stops a day. They return to the same stops every three weeks in the city, and weekly and biweekly in the county system.

“A majority of the kids and adults [served by bookmobiles] have not been to a regular library,” said Mary Wynton, children’s librarian for bookmobile services in the San Fernando Valley. That area is slated next month to receive one of the new bus-like bookmobiles, estimated to cost about $120,000 before book purchases. It will replace a bookmobile from the older generation that resembles an oversized ice cream truck.

City bookmobiles stop more often at schools than any other location.

At a recent stop at Fenton Elementary School in Lake View Terrace, students checked out 900 books in just two hours of a three-hour stop, officials said.

First-grader Taylor Wright was not just happy to have a chance to check out the book “How Many Feet? How Many Tails? A Book of Math Riddles.” She also enjoyed the experience of visiting the bookmobile.

“I love it,” Taylor said. “It’s nice and clean.”

Stocked daily, each van has books chosen specifically to meet the needs of its stops, and in most areas until this year, this has meant an increase in the number of Spanish-language books.

Last year, about 40% of the books in the San Fernando Valley bookmobiles were in Spanish, said children’s librarian Wynton. That number has decreased since the switch from bilingual programs at public schools, where teachers are encouraging students to read more English, Wynton said.

The first bookmobiles appeared in England in the 19th century as horse-drawn wagons. The small town of Hagerstown, Md., was home to one of the first American “rolling libraries” in 1906.

It was not until 1949 that the first aluminum van was built and introduced by the Los Angeles Public Library as the “traveling branch.” At a cost of $6,000, the van carried 4,000 books and magazines, and it was such a novelty that it was exhibited at the L.A. County Fair that year.

At the same time, the county library system also received a bookmobile that would serve more remote regions.

Bookmobiles have consistently been in demand at locations that want to be added to routes, said Carmen Martinez, director of branches for the city library system.

The popularity of bookmobiles has prompted letters of support for them when the public has perceived any threat of cuts to the library budget. The overall size of the city fleet has not changed for the last 10 years and no cuts are expected, Martinez said.

There has been a small national movement to outfit bookmobiles with Internet access via satellite dishes, but so far that is only in the discussion stage in the city and county library systems.

With new technology or not, officials say they expect to keep bookmobiles going, maybe even for another 50 years.

“[It’s] in demand because the library is more in demand,” said Martinez. “People read about the resources that the library offers and they want us to bring the library to them.”

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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIVING

With school days fast approaching, even preschoolers can join in the learning process with easy-to-follow books that teach how to count. E5