Last night at the book festival, Micki and Morgan (and their owners) were on hand to provide listening ears to young readers. Called Paws to Read at our public library, the program allows a safe opportunity to read aloud to a non-judgmental listeners: dogs. Watching the readers select one of the many dog-related books from the library and settling in next to the dogs was delightful. The dogs hardly had a break during their hour of volunteer time! Readers kept lining up for a turn, some coming back three or four times to read. Micki and Morgan enjoyed Laura Numeroff's new book If You Give a Dog a Donut, Sit, Truman! by Dan Harper, Arthur's New Puppy by Marc Brown, Maya Gottfried's Good Dog, and many other titles. p.s. This kind listener, my brother's dog Sam, is no longer with us, but gosh, was he a good dog!
this is such an inspired and inspiring pairing...dogs and fledgling readers...simply brilliant.
ReplyDeleteLove this - dogs are great listeners!
ReplyDeletep.s. re: framing the 'eyes' photo: On iPhoto, I cropped the pic to show just the eyes and then chose, from Effects, 'vignette' (I think).
Ah, dogs. They make us better people.
ReplyDeleteI agree, this is such a SMART program. What a great way to encourage shy readers. What a great way to encourage any kind of reader. After all, dogs ARE the best pets of all!
ReplyDeleteI love this program and want to create more opportunities for kids and dogs to read together. One of the coolest things about the whole experience was that one of the dog owners - with whom I'd been corresponding for two months - turned out to be one of the women in my yoga strength class. It's funny how we move through life's activities and know so little about each other. And it turns out she was a librarian!
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