‘Turn the page’: Oxford Elementary School celebrates Read Across America (2024)

OXFORD — If reading in school is a big deal, every March it takes on a life of its own at Oxford Elementary School. What began as Read Across America Week grew into a month-long celebration and keeps expanding.

For the second year, OES has invited members of the community and beyond to come inside its classrooms to read their favorite stories and introduce students to new adventures of words and pictures.

The Advertiser Democrat visited Taylor Nicholas’ fourth grade class at OES and read from two chapter books: Robert Lawson’s classic The Tough Winter, about a community of New England woodland animals coming together to survive a particularly perilous winter, and The Worry Week, written by Anna Lindbergh and illustrated by Portland-based Kevin Hawkes, where three sisters secretly spend a week alone at their family’s cottage on North Haven Island in Penobscot Bay.

A number of well-known locals have stopped by OES to read with students: photographer Kate Michaud; restaurateur Ryan Ricci; Sgt. Dan Hanson from the Maine State Police; school bus driver Linda Berry; members of Oxford’s fire department; former OES Principal Tiffani Karnes and Stacia Cordwell, Oxford’s former school board director, among others.

The kids in Miss Nicholas’ class also shared some of the books, including The Lobster Lady, which is about Maine’s oldest lobster harvester Ginny Oliver, who has been lobstering in Penobscot Bay for 95 years. They also had two books written by Grace Lin, a writer and illustrator who has been authoring children’s books since 1999.

Schoolwide, OES students are celebrating Read Across America with Lin’s two stories, Once Upon a Book and A Big Mooncake for Little Star. And she will visit the school April 3 to read and talk with children about using art to tell stories.

“In addition to NEA’s (National Education Association) theme of celebrating a nation of diverse readers, we also, as a building, are using it as an opportunity to dig into Grace Lin’s work,” educator Melissa Guerrette, coordinator of Read Across America at OES, told the Advertiser Democrat. “At OES, it’s officially this week but we will stretch it out a little longer. Grace Lin’s visit April 3 will be the culmination of the Read Across America activities we’ve been working on.”

Visiting readers came to the school last week to celebrate its Spirit Week. This week, families were invited to participate in a virtual engagement session via Zoom, which took place last night. On April 2, families are invited to attend a literacy celebration at OES, which Lin addressing students there the next day.

Family nights will “encourage students to use art in storytelling,” Guerrette said. “The aim is to share some playful art activities to help with storytelling and help practice a story’s structure, developing stories with details. Laura Manchester, our art teacher, is leading a pretty significant project with every student at OES to celebrate the Grace Lin’s art in Once Upon a Book. Every student’s art will be on display that evening.”

In Once Upon a Book, the story’s main character, Alice, is drawn to a book at home that invites her inside the story. Every time Alice turns the page she is taken to a new land where she discovers new animals and the magic of changing seasons.

OES’ parent-teacher organization purchased copies of Once Upon a Book and A Big Mooncake for Little Star for each of the school’s classes. Last year the PTO brought The First Blade of Sweetgrass, written by Maine authors Suzanne Greenlaw & Gabriel Frey. Their book tells the story of Musquon, a Wabanaki girl learning her ancestral tradition of basket-weaving, a journey that includes learning patience and the natural world around her.

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