Building a Classroom Library

Hello blog readers,

I have a specific request for this blog. If anyone would be interested in supporting me by either sending me books or sending a gift card to amazon.com or half.com or anywhere where I could buy books, that would be great. I'm looking to buy a classroom set of books that my students can read, so we don't have to:
a. share our Basals (we only have 6...for a class of 12)
b. have me read a story to them and then do work with the book. (which is difficult because I don't think I'm giving them a good visual as to what I'm reading...)

We have a classroom set of Charlotte's Web and Mr. Popper's Penguins, but they are definitely too hard for my students at this point.


if you are interested,
Here are some specific books that I would love to buy (and possibly have multiple copies of) for our classroom library:
How I Became a Pirate and Pirates Don't Change Diapers (Melinda Long and David Shannon)
Diary of a Worm and Diary of a Spider and Diary of a Fly (Doreen Cronin)
The Pigeon Books Series: Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, The Pigeon Has Feelings, Too!, Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!, and The Pigeon Wants a Puppy (Mo Willems)
Captain Underpants Series (for the boys!) (Dav Pilkey)
Magic Tree House Series (Mary Pope Osbourne)
any books by the authors David Shannon, David Wiesner, or Mo Willems
The BONE Series (Jeff Smith)
Eats Shoots and Leaves (Lynne Truss)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (Jeff Kinney)
Chris Van Allsburg books (specifically The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, Jumanji, The Stranger, The Wretched Stone, and any others!)
Seymour Simon books about SCIENCE SUBJECTS
if you have ANY other ideas, I would greatly appreciate them too!

my students would appreciate the books so much. it's hard to work with what we have (or don't have...) and I want to make reading fun because it is what they dislike the most...I want them to be able to read quality books. I want to be able to use quality books for solid lessons..and good read aloud books.


thanks in advance. :)