March is a Great Time to Grab a Good Book and Read with your Child

This is part of an ongoing series featuring community members and organizations that partner with One Place and its Child Advocacy Center to fight child abuse. This entry focuses on the partnership with the Onslow County Public Library to promote reading and encourage early literacy.

What started as Read Across America Day on March 2 each year, in recognition of beloved author Dr. Seuss’ birthday, has grown into an extended celebration of stories and books. The reality is that staff members at One Place and the Onslow County Public Library join forces all year long to kindle the love of reading in children.

While March 2 spotlights the literary delights of cats in hats and green eggs and ham, and National Reading Month in March focuses on the role of reading in developing the next generation of citizens, the advocates at One Place and the public library are constant champions of words and language. They are always finding new ways to encourage the skills that ignite the imaginations of children of all ages and provide essential directions to life from infancy through adulthood.

Lisa Davis, early literacy coordinator for One Place, is a bit of a romantic when it comes to reading. She cultivated her passion for reading as a student herself, receiving both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and continuing as she began to teach. In addition to teaching jobs at the high school and college levels, she home-schooled her own children through the eighth grade. “So I can see how language and literacy develop throughout your whole lifetime, Davis said. “It is crucial to everything else that you learn.”

She sees books as a boundless resource for living and learning. “A book can be anything you want it to be,” she said. “It can be a story, it can be a bonding experience, it can be a how-to…. There are no limits.”

While electronic devices still have value in teaching and presenting words, Davis has an affinity for books on paper. “I still love a book you can put in your hand—one that you can turn the pages and smell them,” she said. She notes, however, that it is not necessary to choose one form over the other, as long as there are words involved.

Since 2010, a cornerstone of One Place’s literacy efforts has been Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Using resources gathered by the folksy, iconic vocalist and actress, the program mails new books monthly to homes of children who register through partner agencies such as One Place. The books keep arriving in the mail until a child’s fifth birthday, all at no cost to families. It has been a smashing success through the years. Currently, about 11,000 children in Onslow County receive books, and One Place recently celebrated the milestone of 500,000 books distributed through its partnership with the Imagination Library.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is available to all children under the age of 5 in Onslow County. To register a child visit www.oneplaceonslow.org/dpil

The program serves to whet young appetites for finding books at another local source, one that has been around for a long while: the Onslow County Public Library. “The library has been a close partner with us. They don’t look at it as competition; they look at it as growing book lovers,” Davis said. “We have book lovers who go to a library for storytimes, who go to check out books, and we have book lovers who are having them delivered to their homes.”

Lisa Kozlowski, head of Youth Services for the Onslow County Public Library, said Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library combines well with library programs such as summer reading.

By working together to promote programs such as Read Across America and the Imagination Library, the public library and One Place support educators throughout the county in helping local children get a jump on reading. Honoring teachers and others who teach literacy skills is a big part of the local National Reading Month celebration, with the library using the occasion to kick off a year-long Nominate Your Teacher contest. Students can nominate teachers from pre-school through high school, making them eligible for monthly drawings for gift baskets.

Kozlowski said the library also hopes to partner with One Place in pursuing a Family Place Libraries grant through the state library system. The Family Place Libraries program seeks to transform local libraries into family-friendly community centers for literacy, early childhood development, parent education and engagement, family support and community information. “The things that One Place does fit in perfectly with Family Place, and I know Lisa Davis has been wanting to do that for years,” Kozlowski said.

The library’s Youth Services division provides multiple avenues to reading, and Kozlowski noted that a key to success is not getting stuck on format or subject matter. Whether the subject is science fiction or sports, or whether the preferred format is digital or audio over picture books, the library’s philosophy is reaching young readers according to their individual choices. The promotion of reading activities uses various challenges, often with prizes such as backpacks, to encourage young people to track their own progress.

The library also finds fertile ground for its Youth Services in places such as the Zing Zumm Children’s Museum on New Bridge Street in downtown Jacksonville. It assists the Onslow County Sheriff’s Department with its summer day-camp programming and even finds a receptive audience at Animal Services, where people can read to cats. “It is best to utilize these other groups to spread the word of ourselves and them to other people, to go into the communities and open up more experiences and opportunities to find out we are even here,” Kozlowski said.

The library works with One Place on story-walks that allow participants in various locations, including parks and businesses, to walk along paths that feature posts with oversized pages of books, allowing children and families to read a story while exercising and enjoying the outdoors. One Place also maintains more than 50 Little Free Libraries at locations throughout the county. The Little Free Libraries are boxes, often located near schools or child-care centers, where children and adults can leave a book for others or take one home for themselves.

The biggest challenge facing libraries and other literacy advocates such as One Place is maintaining relevance in a rapidly changing environment for learning and reading. Lisa Davis finds the library to be an ideal partner for furthering One Place’s mission of strengthening families. “I think any time you are helping families and giving children a good start, that’s always a fundamental part of what we do.”

Click here to find the Little Free Library closest to you.

Click here for more information on literacy programs offered through One Place.

Click here for more information on programs and services available through the Onslow County Public library.

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