Empowerment through Creation and Hard Work

By Susanna Pitzer, author of the award-winning book Not Afraid of Dogs

For years, I have worked with children and adults on writing, illustrating, acting, and producing their own shows. All of these creative endeavors have allowed me to see first hand how a person who shares their talents is a person that grows more confidant.

They start to speak up more, to share ideas, and to set higher goals for themselves.

Through Behind the Book, I’m able to work with children on writing and illustrating their own stories, thus building their sense of worth while at the same time improving their reading, writing, and thinking skills.

I work with the teacher and students for weeks on their projects. Work…that’s another important part of this process. These young people get a glimpse into what it takes to succeed. They begin to understand that most projects aren’t dashed off on paper and produced. They are worked on, changed, reviewed, discussed, and then worked on some more.

We discuss how most books are written over years, and that we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves if our story isn’t perfect the first day.

Personally, I was blessed with two great parents who supported creativity and believed in hard work. We all worked in the family business, my father’s veterinary practice. My father expected us to work hard, and he strived to make it fun. As we worked, we told stories, made up songs, and imagined what wonderful futures we would have.

I strive to bring these feelings to my students. That work and fun are not separate.

To me, the most important result of Behind the Book visits is the empowerment of young people. Through their hard work in writing, editing, and completing projects, students see that they can accomplish some pretty wonderful things. They improve their reading, writing, and thinking skills, feel better about themselves, and start to feel more self worth.

My hope for each of them is that they will start to speak up more, share their great ideas with others, and set higher goals for themselves.

Susanna Pitzer during a Behind the Book program with 1st graders at CS 21.

In Australia, Communities Come Together to ‘Paint the Town REaD’ For Early Literacy

By: Dr. Matt Finch

Matt works with a fifth grade student in Behind the Book's Comic Making Workshop

Auburn’s not the first place people think of when asked to imagine Australia. Its suburban streets are lined with African restaurants and Chinese bazaars; in this densely populated Sydney neighborhood, far from the surfers’ beaches and without a kangaroo in site, you’re as likely to be greeted with a Somali ‘See tahay’ as an Aussie ‘G’day’.

Early one morning in June of this year, I watched as educators, community health staff, booksellers, performers and local government officers all descended on this multicultural suburb in the name of a unique Australian literacy scheme, Paint the Town REaD.

Marquees, balloons and banners sprouted throughout the neighborhood announcing a Community Reading Day, and a local mascot, Auzzie, led songs, dances and stories for young children and their carers.

Pre-schoolers and their parents flocked to the event, joining storytelling sessions at venues that ranged from the local police station to cafés, shops and even supermarkets. Amid music, dance and storytelling from the various cultures of Auburn, a great procession of adults and kids moved through the neighborhood to celebrate reading.

At one coffee shop, the manager, Vincent, read to children from a series of picture books. He was a consummate performer, engaging with the kids, making them laugh, talking through the pictures with them. Each group that came to that coffee shop adored his enthusiastic, heartfelt delivery.

After the session I got talking to the 25-year-old café manager. Vincent came to Australia from Taiwan at the age of 15, with hardly any English. After settling in Sydney, he developed his language skills and started to work in the café. He noticed that every day, local moms would arrive for mid-morning coffee with their babies in strollers.

As people at neighboring tables chatted over coffee, friendships formed between the diverse communities of Auburn. When Paint the Town REaD came to the suburb, Vincent was keen to use this natural meeting-place as a vehicle for the literacy skills that had brought him success in his new home – spreading the message to ‘read, talk and sing with your child from birth to kindergarten’.

Over the last few years, I’ve encountered literacy organizations from around the world, all dealing with the same challenges: engaging communities, sustaining child language development, and helping parents find the skills and confidence to support their children’s literacy.

Whether it’s Behind the Book’s author workshops in NYC, the one-to-one mentors of England’s Volunteer Reading Help and South Africa’s Help2Read, or the hospital-based initiatives of Reach Out and Read in the USA, all over the planet people are striving to give our children the opportunity to be literate for life.

The unique response of Australia’s Paint the Town REaD scheme is to engage whole communities in the issue of early literacy. Although inspired by research into child development, it’s a down-to-earth, grassroots movement which has spread across the country over the past 16 years.

Through ongoing events as well as annual Reading Days like the one in Auburn, Paint the Town REaD thrives on community – spreading the word throughout a town or suburb, so that it’s café owners, police officers, pharmacists, shopkeepers and high school students who all get involved and bring the scheme to life for parents, children and the community at large.

I’ve attended events like the inspiring 24-hour readathon for LitWorld’s World Read Aloud Day in Times Square before, but Paint the Town REaD goes beyond profile-raising. Vibrant one-off Paint the Town REaD events like Reading Day come with a year-round commitment to literacy in each town, until everyone from pre-school to the retirement home joins the commitment to ‘Read, talk, sing with your child from birth to kindergarten!’

High schoolers read with younger brothers and sisters, local businesspeople and public services donate their time to the cause of early literacy – and the whole community focuses on the goal of helping children become literate for life.

As organizations increasingly recognize that youth literacy development is as much about the whole community as the individual child, whether it’s New Zealand’s Literacy Aotearoa supporting parents who want to read to their children or Behind the Book implementing a whole-school approach to author-supported literacy workshops, Paint the Town REaD leads the way in demonstrating how an entire town can get behind the message of lifelong literacy from birth.

To find out more about Paint the Town REaD, read this interview with its founder Rhonda Brain, or download the Paint the Town REaD booklet here.

Dr. Matt Finch is a writer-educator and curriculum consultant for Behind the Book who has worked around the world from Shakespeare’s birthplace to Brooklyn and the mountains of Peru. Find out more at his site, http://booksadventures.wordpress.com/about/

Reflections of a Behind the Book Author

Patricia McCormick

By Patricia McCormick

When I think of when I was the same age as my readers, I cringe.

I was on the debate team. I plastered my hair with Dippity Do, then rolled it in empty juice cartons. And in the summer, I sat in the sun, slathered in baby oil, reading every book in the Cherry Ames, Student Nurse series.

And while it’s tempting to make fun of Cherry Ames, I realized not that long ago that those books probably had a profound impact on me. As an awkward and restless kid stuck in the suburbs, those books at least presented the possibility of life beyond the cul-de-sac. They featured a young woman living away from home and pursuing her dream career. Based in England during WWII, she evacuated wounded soldiers; as a public health nurse, she cared for poor rural patients in Iowa; and on a temporary assignment at a ski chalet in Switzerland, she found intrigue – and a handsome ski instructor.

By today’s standards these plots may sound silly. But they were probably precisely what I needed as I struggled with my identity as good girl, raised in a strict Catholic family, yearning to break out of the confines of my family and my home town.

When I visit classrooms now as part of Behind the Book, the books we discuss deal with much bigger, much darker issues. But the kids and their struggles are, in many ways the same.

When we discuss My Brother’s Keeper, it’s amazing how many kids step forward and talk about the substance abuse in their homes and neighborhoods. And when we read Purple Heart, I’m always struck by how many boys are struggling with how to define themselves as young men and how many girls are wrestling with secrets they keep to protect someone they love. Their honesty in sharing these issues with their classmates is downright inspiring.

But what really moves me is the reaction they get from their classmates. The compassion, the understanding, the comfort and the maturity that these kids show is always astonishing. Their teachers deserve a lot of the credit; they introduce books and creative writing in a safe and supportive environment. But I think what sets these school visits apart for me is how fiction can bring out the best in these students.

Patricia McCormick (second row, right) with an 11th grade class at Brooklyn Community Arts and Media HS

By looking at the plight of some fictional kid, they gain the distance to look at their own lives – but without the harsh judgment they often heap on themselves and others. By hearing that other students are struggling with the same problems, they feel less alone. And by being able to express their feelings – first in discussion, then in writing – they invariably open up a way to solutions.

Sometimes the solutions are vengeful or fanciful – I’m often stunned by the violence in their writing – but I believe that written catharsis lets off steam that might otherwise come out in less healthy ways.  Just as often, though, they conjure up scenarios – for themselves or for their fictional stand-ins – that are breathtaking in their creativity, hope and joy.

It’s a far cry from Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. But being with teenagers in New York in 2011 somehow takes me right back to those awful – and awesome years.

It was a magical time, when all things seemed possible. It was also an excruciating time, when nothing about me seemed right. It’s a time of life that stokes and feeds my fiction. And with such wonderful company, I dive back into all the torment, all the possibility of being a teenager.