Raising Readers Book Celebration Bangor!

Raising Readers Book Celebration

Friday, September 24, 2010
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM (ongoing)
Maine Discovery Museum
74 Main St., Bangor, ME
Free Admission
Info: (207) 541-7531

Raising Readers celebrates the collection of books given to Maine children this year through doctor’s offices with readings and activities by children’s book authors and illustrators, Amy MacDonald, Scott Nash, and Lynn Plourde.

Reading With Older Kids

Raising Reader Guest Blogger:
Penny Noyce
Guest Blogger, Penny Noyce is the author of the new children’s book, Lost in Lexicon. In the novel for readers ages 8-12, Daphne and Ivan, travel to a world riddled with forgetting and fragmented by their loss of words, numbers, and understanding.

One of the heroines of the novel, Aunt Adelaide, is modeled after Penny Noyce’s mother Betty Noyce who founded the Libra Foundation. Penny Noyce chairs the board of the Libra Foundation which generously funds Raising Readers. How appropriate to have a novelist and lover of words driving a program that has brought more than 1.3 million books to Maine children.

Reading With Older Kids
We’re all convinced of the benefits of reading to young children, but what about reading with older kids?

When my twins were in fifth grade, they received the following English assignment: Choose an adventure book to read together with one of your parents. As you read, write notes to each other about your reactions, thoughts, and questions. Communicate in writing about the book!

My son Owen and I chose to read Into Thin Air, John Krakauer’s harrowing account of the 1996 Everest climbing season, when the latest in adventure tourism went terribly wrong. Two teams of fit, semi-experienced climbers paid $60,000 each for a “guaranteed” chance at scaling Everest. When a storm howled in, three tourists and two tour leaders perished.

I loved the assignment, and Owen enjoyed it, too. We passed the book back and forth, wrote notes on the computer, and (even) talked about the book. I shared my surprise that the Everest climbers were miserable from the start, beset by insomnia, headache, and hacking cough. Owen shared his sense of the beauty of the mountain and the lonely horror of freezing to death.

Recently, a fifth grade teacher in my wealthy suburban community told me they don’t give that assignment anymore: Too many parents complained.

Parents complained?

Maybe they were too busy traveling for work to read. But couldn’t they use a Kindle on the plane and text their remarks to their children? Maybe they worried the books would bore them. But couldn’t they negotiate with their children for a book that would captivate both of them? Or maybe the parents were afraid of getting a bad grade on the assignment.

As a society, we have embraced the idea of reading to kids too young to read for themselves. Often, though, we forget the value of shared reading experiences as our kids grow older.

I was one of four children, and long after we were proficient readers, we still cuddled on the couch to listen to my mother read to us every night. She didn’t “do the voices” like an actress. She just read in her steady, calming tone; and we listened, learning to pay attention and paint pictures in our minds.

Listening to an adult read aloud exposes children to vocabulary in context, complex sentence structure, and a continuous train of thought. These are all good tools for enhancing children’s thinking, but even better is the shared intimacy of these moments. We don’t have to give them up as our children approach middle school. Even when we don’t read aloud, we can still share bedtime reading, lolling together on the couch or bed, each reading our own book, exchanging comments from time to time.

My father and brother both liked science fiction. Sometimes, on vacation, when there weren’t enough unread books to go around, the first reader tore off sections of a paperback book as he finished them and passed them on to the second reader. I’m not advocating book dismemberment, but what a message about shared enthusiasm!

You and your children can always recommend books to one another. My son Damian’s suggestions have grown from his passionate advocacy of Tony Abbott’s Droon series through his romance with Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl to his current insistence that I read Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen. To tell the truth, I can’t keep up with him, but we do enough common reading that we can always discuss why characters do what they do or how it would be to live in another world. (One friend of mine tells me that the Harry Potter books provided dinner conversation for years.) I reciprocate by saving newspaper or magazine articles for Damian, choosing books from the library I know he’ll like, or sending him links to stories on the web.

By reading books together, we keep communication lines open and share our interests, aspirations, and inner worlds in a way that’s oblique, not too confrontational or embarrassing. Nobody gives us a grade.

(This post original appeared on View from the Windowseat)

Maine Parents Best in the Nation

The Annie E. Casey Foundation just released its 2010 Kids Count Data Book. In it was some great news for the state of Maine. The study showed that 96% of Maine parents of young children read to their children at least three times a week.

This is the highest rate in the nation!

Raising Readers hopes that their 10 year history of giving over 1.3 million books to Maine children has helped parents find more opportunities to read aloud. The real credit, though, goes to Maine families for their commitment to their child’s healthy growth and well being. Well done!

Raising Readers Stories: Taya at 4 Months

Raising Readers has touched Mom Lora in different ways – first, as a site coordinator for the Raising Readers program and now as a new Mom. Watch for posts from Lora and daughter Taya about their experiences with Raising Readers books.

Taya’s 4 Month Well Child Visit
Wow! She is getting so big! As the doctor came in she turned to notice the book, Smile that he was holding for her because it had a baby on the front smiling back at her. We opened it with her doctor and she smiled back. What a great way to start a visit with her doctor.

Raising Readers Partners with the Maine Family Literacy Initiative and Public Libraries to Support the Literacy of Maine Families

Reading is one of the best ways parents can help their children develop a love of books and reading and prepare them to learn to read. However, access to books and the parent’s own literacy level can be barriers to making that happen. A new partnership between Raising Readers, the Maine Family Literacy Initiative, and select public libraries is designed to help overcome those barriers.

Combining the Raising Readers books with access to family literacy services offered by Maine Family Literacy Initiative (MEFLI) grantees is the concept behind the new partnership. MEFLI programs across the state work with families to address the learning and literacy needs of both adults and children. Integrating the books that families receive from Raising Readers into family literacy services deepens their impact and helps families get the most out of them.

Cara Sawyer of Cherryfield Public Library with young reader.

Eight public libraries will provide access to the books by family literacy programs and others. The Maine State Library facilitated a process to identify one library in each of eight counties to house the Raising Readers book collections and collaborate with MEFLI on family literacy services.

Raising Reader MEFLI Libraries with former First Lady,
Mrs. Barbara Bush and Maine First Lady, Karen Baldacci

The participating libraries are: Belfast Free Library, Camden Public Library, Cherryfield Public Library, Paris Public Library, Skowhegan Public Library, Strong Public Library, Waldoboro Public Library and the Thompson Free Library in Dover-Foxcroft .

A complementary collaboration with the state’s Resource Development Centers provides access to Raising Readers books in the remaining eight counties.

Rasing Reader Stories: Taya at 2 Months

Raising Readers has touched Mom Lora in different ways – first, as a site coordinator for the Raising Readers program and now as a new Mom. Watch for posts from Lora and daughter Taya about their experiences with Raising Readers books.

Taya’s 2 Month Well Child Visit
“Taya received Babies on the Go from her doctor at her 2-month visit today. When we got home to read it she followed my finger as I pointed to all the little babies. It was so nice to see her enjoy the book.” -Mom Lora

NOTE: Share your Raising Readers Stories as well by emailing us at info@raisingreaders.org. Send quotes, stories, pictures, or whatever you would like to share about Raising Readers. (Please put ‘Raising Readers Stories’ in the subject line of the email.)

Books in the Home

166,000 individual Maine children have received books from Raising Readers for their home libraries in the last ten years. We all know intuitively that this is a positive thing for the children of the state, but a new national study confirms the positive link between books in the home and children that do well in school.

A University of Nevada, Reno study showed that children raised in a home where they were exposed to 500 books would go 3.2 years further in their education, on average. 500 books? Who has 500 books in their home?

The importance in not the number of books but that there is a relationship between school success and books in the home. By the time your Maine child reaches the age of five, she will have received up to twelve books from Raising Readers. How do you expose your child to more books beyond her home library? Use a Maine library.

If you took two picture books home from the public library each week started when your child is a toddler, think of how many books would pass through your home. Use that library card to turn your home into a learning rich place for your future student to grow up in!

Raising Reader Stories: Taya as a Newborn

Raising Readers has touched Mom Lora in different ways – first, as a site coordinator for the Raising Readers program and now as a new Mom.

Watch for posts from Lora and daughter Taya about their experiences with Raising Readers books.

Share your Raising Readers Stories as well by emailing us at info@raisingreaders.org. Send quotes, stories, pictures, or whatever you would like to share about Raising Readers. (Please put ‘Raising Readers Stories’ in the subject line of the email.)

Taya as a Newborn
Lorna said this about receiving her Birth Bag from Raising Readers:

“It was so nice to receive a Raising Readers bag with some books for Taya in the hospital when she was born to start her own book collection.”

New Anthology, New Name

Raising Readers produces an anthology each year of five books by Maine authors and illustrators for five-year-olds in the program. We are currently working on our 6th book created exclusively for Raising Readers. This anthology will be our third with Boston publisher, Candlewick Press.

As you see from the list of titles below, we try and create a title that labels the book a unique treasure (or treasury) for Maine kids.

Will you help us name the new anthology? If we choose your title we will send you the very first copy of the anthology when it arrives in our hands next year. Simply leave us a comment on this post.

Previous Anthology Titles:
1. Raising Readers A Collection of Stories from Maine
2. Raising Readers 5 Stories from Maine
3. Raising Readers Stories for Maine Children
4. Raising Readers Five Stories for Maine Children
5. Books from Maine: A Raising Readers Collection
6. ???

Happy Birthday from a Raising Reader Family

Matthew Scholer Reading His Raising Reader Book

My name is Colleen Lunn Scholer and I am a mother of three kids (6, 4, and 1). My step-father, Peter Wood, let me know that Raising Readers is celebrating 10 years this year.

My husband, Aaron, is a pediatrician at Central Maine Pediatrics and we both think very highly of the Raising Readers program. The program actually used a photo of Matthew when he was just a few days old. He was reading with me on our bed.

Mother, Colleen Lunn Scholer reads to Matthew from Raising Reader Book

The story that I share with people is that our family loves to read and, yes, we planned to read to Matthew. But in those first few days, we spent lots of time in our Master bedroom. That wasn’t where we had put some of his first books. We didn’t realize when we set up his nursery that we’d be in our bedroom so much! But in our room, we had the books that we received from Raising Readers and that was what I reached for. I was amazed at how alert he was and that he was actually enjoying being read to!

Dr. Aaron Scholer Reads to His Children

Today, Matthew is reading everything. He just turned 6 in November and is in Kindergarten. He reads to his sisters, reads the sports section of the newspaper- you name it.

Matthew Reads to Madeline from her 9 month Raising Reader book

I love the program and I will be sad when my daughter, Madeline turns 5 and the program will be over for our family. But I hope we will always be involved.

Peter Wood Reads to His Grandchildren