Read Across America with the Traveling Library CCTX

By: Sydney Spangler

The Traveling Library CCTX and schools across the Coastal Bend are celebrating Read Across America week. Read Across America Week 2022 kicked off Monday, Feb. 24, and lasts through Friday, March 4.

Today we are celebrating National Read Across America Day. The day was established by the National Education Association (NEA) in 1998 to help get kids excited about reading. So, we are challenging you and your little one(s) to pick up a book and read!

According to NEA, hearing books read aloud can help provide a model of how students could share their own stories. Books help kids understand how stories are structured. These titles, which are about telling stories, can help show kids that stories have value and illustrate how the storyteller, story, and listener are connected:

• "Zen Shorts" by Jon Muth

• "Aunt Flossie's Hat (and Crab Cakes Later)" by Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard

• "Bear Has a Story to Tell" by Philip C. Stead

• "Aunt Isabel Tells a Good One" by Kate Duke

You can also read along with the Traveling Library by tuning into the Traveling Library CCTX: The Podcast. Our founder, Abigail Treviño, will be reading "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak later this week. It's a story about a young boy named Max who, after dressing in his wolf costume, wreaks havoc through his household and is sent to bed without his supper. From there, Max sets sail to an island inhabited by the Wild Things, who name him king and share a wild rumpus with him.

Here is an additional list of resources where you can listen to stories:

• Circle Round, WBUR's Circle Round podcast adapts folktales from around the world into sound- and music-rich radio plays for kids of all ages

• Watch storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy spin a funny, wise and luminous tale of parents and kids, starring her Cuban mother in her TED talk and watch her tell the hilarious tale of her first visit to the library at the Get Georgia Reading Launch

• Sonia Sanchez discusses her beginnings as a writer and poet

• Asian American Storytopia celebrates Asian and Asian American culture and heritage through the art of storytelling

• Stories by the Fireside: A Pueblo Tradition from the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center

• Smithsonian Institution’s Stories from Main Street shares stories from residents from small and rural communities