Pomplamoose helps local schools.
He online success of a Marin County musical duo on YouTube is translating into thousands of needed book donations for school students in Richmond.
Book donors, in turn, get to download the Christmas album by Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, known to their fans as the act Pomplamoose.
Pomplamoose sold some 100,000 songs online last year, and the YouTube video channel PomplamooseMusic has almost 210,000 subscribers who track releases by the duo.
Tyler Hester, a ninth-grade English teacher at the Leadership Public Schools charter high school in Richmond, has been close friends since college with Conte and Dawn and suggested leveraging the group's online popularity to bring books to low-income students.the site's donation counter showed 3,708 donors sending 4,179 books.
The Richmond Book Drive site has full details about the donation/download offer and a link to amazon.com, which has a wish list of needed books. Donors make a purchase, put the Leadership School as the delivery address and then are directed to a "thank you" page where they can download the Christmas album in return.
WEST COUNTY NOTES: A new group dedicated to stemming the tide of violence among young men is holding a kickoff event at 4 p.m. today at Peter's Rock Deliverance Temple Church of God in Christ, 4739 Foothill Blvd. in Oakland. One of the founders of the Grieving Mothers Unite group is Peggy Walker, of Richmond, whose son, Carlnell Walker, was killed in 2006 as he prepared for his junior year at Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta.
Organizers want to reach out to other mothers who have lost their children to violence and hope they will come to hear and further the group's goals, which include helping victims' families cope with the loss and providing assistance and guidance to young people trying to break out of the cycle of violence.