Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 5, 1992 TAG: 9203050386
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALMENA HUGHES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I've heard of read-a-thons, and I've heard of rock-a-thons. I thought, I'd put them together," she says.
Arnold and Elizabeth Hiles, who also works for the school system, started making phone calls and before too long, they had 27 spanking new rocking chairs loaned to them by Grand Interiors, Ethan Allen, Schewel's, Lowe's, Olde Salem Furnishings and Barewood furniture stores.
They also had 24 volunteer readers, including parents, friends, School Board members and school staff, day-care directors, a minister, several retired teachers, City Council members David Bowers and Howard Musser, School Superintendent Frank Tota and me.
The chairs were arranged in a circle on the stage of the Roanoke Academy of Math & Science. Then for the next two days, the magnet school's 445 pupils filed in, in 30-minute shifts, to sit in the oversized rockers to read or be read to.
"Shush, shush" go the chairs as the students of Elyse Coleman's second-grade class rock contentedly, their eyes turned expectantly in my direction.
"Whir, click," goes the video machine, as school media specialist Andrea Beamer records the session.
Taking a deep breath and reaching back into my memory for when I was 7 and lost my first tooth, I become Ora Mae Cotton of Crabapple Orchard - the rough and tumble little girl in Tom Birdseye's book, "Air Mail to the Moon."
Somebody stole the tooth that Ora Mae lost. She needs that tooth to get a thousand, or maybe even a hundred dollars from the tooth fairy. So she vows to anyone who will listen, including her mother, father, brother, sister and pesky neighbor, "When I catch 'em I'm gonna open up a can of gotcha and send 'em air mail to the moon."
The kids giggle at Ora Mae's silly sound effects as she flutters the tooth while it still dangles from a thread of skin. They snicker at her funny lisp once the tooth is out. And they laugh out loud each time she vows to send some new tooth-stealing suspect air mail to the moon.
The "shush, shush" grows more rapid as Ora Mae becomes increasingly frustrated at being unable to unearth the tooth thief. At last, she bursts into tears.
Trying to show that she means business, she sticks her hands deep into her pockets and finds, guess what?
"Her tooth!" the kids shout in unison, some of them grinning their own gap-toothed smiles because they suspected that's where Ora Mae's missing tooth was all along.
Closing the book, I am no longer Ora Mae and become a reporter once again.
"Thank you," the children say to me. Then one walks forward and hands me a book unlike any I could ever find in a store. Made by the class, it's full of letters, drawings and notes expressing appreciation for my having read to them.
What a wonderful return on an investment that only took me about 15 minutes. I am truly surprised and touched by the gift.
Arnold says the children loved their RAMS' Rockin' Readers read-a-thon. And she says experience shows that interest in and requests for the books the pupils heard will increase because "hearing the stories really stimulates them."
She says she'd like to see the rock-and-read-a-thon done on a citywide basis. She'd also like to see more people reading to children and letting children read to them, whether or not they do it in a rocker.
"The children got to meet many new people and the people got to meet them," she says. "It was a wonderful experience."
For the pupils, and for me, too.
by CNB