Daniel Rubin | Olney's one-girl bookmobile

Kate Rzucidlo was 7 or 8 when she fixed on her first cause: She was going to save the giant panda. She collected change from around the house and sent it off to some panda-saving organization.

The Florida panther came next. The girl from Landenberg, Chester County, had read how the big cat was endangered, so she sold old toys and fresh lemonade on her front lawn and raised $80.

(An aunt, thinking Kate was collecting money for the Florida Panthers hockey team, told Kate's mom: "They need help, but I don't think this will make any difference.")

So it was well within character for Kate to grow worried in June when she saw a photograph in this space of the bare shelves at Olney High School's library.

It was an eye-catcher. A student activist had snapped the picture on behalf of an organization seeking to change inequities in the way Pennsylvania funds its schools.

The photo suggested that the entire library was empty, but librarian Shelly Curran was just reorganizing the place, culling old and damaged books and bringing order to a program that had been ignored for years.

Yesterday morning Curran, Olney's two principals, a downtown administrator, and four students were waiting by the school's front door as a maroon Chevy Suburban pulled up just after 10 o'clock.

In the back were nine boxes of books and Kate, now 13, who had spent a good part of her summer collecting them.

"This is wonderful," said principal Rita Hardy, tall and booming, as she extended her hand. "Thank you for your commitment. Look at all the books. I didn't know there'd be so many. This is a wonderful problem to have."

Kate, red-haired and 4-foot-11, disappeared among the four high schoolers - senior Jamaine Anderson and sophomores Tyreall Baker, Julius Grigsby and Donte Stone - each grabbing a box; skirting the metal detectors and the signs forbidding sodas, weapons and sunflower seeds; and wending their way to the basement library.

There Curran led them to about 20 magazines displayed on a rack - titles like Sports Illustrated, Prevention, Car and Driver, Essence, National Geographic, Philadelphia Magazine and Family Handyman.

Until the girl had given them, the only magazines one could find in the library had been donated by teachers.

When Hardy asked what made the girl care about a school an hour away, Kate replied: "We actually complain about our own school, but when I saw that picture, I said, 'Wow. I should do something to help.' "

"Wow," Hardy repeated. "If we had more people who could respond with such words, I should do something to help."

However informal, it was the second ceremony in two days to honor people who have supported libraries at a time when the Philadelphia schools cannot.

On Tuesday, Germantown High School's library was rededicated after Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church raised $45,000 for remodeling, books and computers.

Kate, an eighth grader at a Christian school in Delaware, started a movement all by herself. She explained how she began by e-mailing friends and family, asking them to help buy some of the magazines that Curran had put on a wish list.

Then Kate and her brother Phil, 17, saw a pile of giveaways at a used-book store in Delaware and asked if they could take them all.

That was just part of the harvest. Included in the several hundred books the Rzucidlos delivered were such classics as Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men and The Iliad, plus something called 101 School Cafeteria Jokes.

Before Kate left, the librarian read a certificate that school officials had signed to honor their young benefactor.

"Kate Rzucidlo embodies the spirit of commitment needed to make meaningful change happen," it began. It called her a youthful superhero.

"That's what you are," Hardy said. "A superhero."