Barnes & Noble Donates More Than 2,000 Books to Roosevelt Elementary S

NEW YORK, April 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Barnes & Noble donated more than 2,000 books today to Roosevelt Elementary School in New Brunswick, NJ. The donation was made on behalf of the Council of Parents of Bilingual Education and the Mexican American Organization, Inc. and will support the education of children in a community where many Barnes & Noble employees reside. Representing a significant addition to the Roosevelt Elementary School library, the donation includes a wide variety of titles, as well as complete sets of such popular series as The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050405/DATU055 )

"It is an honor for us to contribute such a large selection of books to Roosevelt Elementary School. With this donation, we hope to demonstrate our commitment to education and to promoting the love of reading at an early age. We strongly believe books can open the door to a better future for children in our communities," said Steve Riggio, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble.

In a heartwarming event held in the Tito Puente Memorial Auditorium at Roosevelt Elementary School, school administrators, teachers and students celebrated the book donation. In attendance were Barnes & Noble Chief Executive Officer Steve Riggio; School Superintendent Richard M. Kaplan; the President of the Council of Parents of Bilingual Education, Ivan Salazar Tello; and the President of the Mexican American Organization of New Brunswick, Estanislao Sanchez. The principal for Roosevelt Elementary, Hector Ramon Villafane received the donation on behalf of the school.

"At Roosevelt Elementary, our children come first, and it is critical to provide them with the resources they need to be successful. We believe early reading will open many doors for our students in the future, and I want to thank Barnes & Noble for donating such a generous selection of multicultural books to our library," said Principal Villafane.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc., the world's largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 820 bookstores in 50 states. For the third year in a row, the company is the nation's top retail brand for quality, according to the EquiTrend(R) Brand Study by Harris Interactive(R). Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (http://www.bn.com/ ), one of the Web's largest e-commerce sites and the number-one brand among e-commerce companies, according to the latest EquiTrend survey. In addition to its retail operations, Barnes & Noble is one of the largest book publishers in the world. Its subsidiary, Sterling Publishing, publishes over 1,100 new titles a year and has an active list of over 5,000 titles.

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company's corporate Web site: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/ .