A Reading Assignment

By MEGAN HUSSEY
The Tampa Tribune
Published: July 31, 2009

WESLEY CHAPEL - Thirty-seven children served by Farmworkers Self-Help in Dade City paid a visit to Barnes & Noble at the Shops at Wiregrass in Wesley Chapel on Wednesday. And, for many, it marked their first literacy experience.

"Some of these kids have never been to a bookstore," said Margarita Roma, executive director of Farmworkers Self-Help. "We want to give them the opportunity to see this, to tell them they can make use of a bookstore like this."

The children, in grades kindergarten through middle school, received books, toys and flash cards from Barnes & Noble, items accumulated through a community school supply drive, as well as bookmarks from the San Antonio Rotary Club, which co-hosted the event.

"We want to be a resource and asset for the community," said Cynthia Mason-Plesner, community relations manager at Barnes & Noble of the Shops at Wiregrass. "We want to put books into students' hands."

This event, Mason-Plesner said, was an offshoot of a June literacy conference at Barnes & Noble co-hosted by San Antonio Rotary and Bob Loring, director of Toys for Tots East Pasco.
Loring also helped organize this event, at which he entertained the children with a reading of "Ferdinand the Bull."

Today, the same students will tour the Dade City Business Center, a former juice plant. They'll be served lunch, and each child will be presented a back-to-school backpack loaded with all the tools they will need for the coming school year. The nonprofit organization Projects of Pasco Inc. provided the supplies and backpacks.

"Today I want to celebrate the idea that learning to read is important," Loring told the kids Wednesday. "Through reading you get a good education. By getting a good education, you can be anything you want."

Some of the children jumped up and stepped forward to study the illustrations in the "Ferdinand," book and the words "cool" and "wow" could be heard.
Patti Blobmke, a bookseller at Barnes & Noble, entertained the children with a reading of "Marley Goes to School," at one point encouraging them to bark along with her, a la Marley, the canine hero of the story.

Then Angela Hutchinson, children's leader at Barnes & Noble, took the kids on a tour of the bookstore, explaining along the way common literary terms such as "fiction," "nonfiction," "reference section" and "dictionary" and quizzing students on their knowledge.
"What is an autobiography?" she asked.

"It's a book you write about yourself," said Leonardo Salgado, 8.
Dalia Morales, 5, exclaimed, "This is making me hungry!" when faced with a shelf of cookbooks.
And 4-year-old Christopher Manriquez flashed a spirited thumbs-up sign at Barnes & Noble music seller Garrett Mull as he tried on a set of headphones during a demonstration of the store's music sampling system.

The children received bookmarks from San Antonio Rotary representative Dolores Riego de Dios, who told them, "We want you to remember this day."

Indeed, making reading memorable was the primary objective of Wednesday's bookstore event.
"We want to create motivation to take reading seriously," Loring said. "Literacy leads to success; success leads to fulfilling your dreams."