Riverview celebrity reading program in full swing

By Ken Johnston
Editor

Riverview Elementary Jr. Kindergarten to grade three students have been combining nutrition and literacy once a week for the past month and will continue to do so for the next ten weeks.
Riverview’s librarian, Rose Tetu, said they started “A Story and a Snack” about four weeks ago with the idea of promoting literacy and a snack. The program is sort of a spin-off from the former “Book and a Bite” program that used to be run in the school by outside agencies. For reasons unknown to Tetu, Book and a Bite was not run this year.
So the school decided to start A Story and a Snack, getting local celebrities to read to the students while they enjoy a snack. In the previous program the snacks were provided free of charge to the students. However, the new program asks every student to bring their own snack and the school is providing a juice box for each of them.
So far there have been four celebrities that have visited the students. Riverview’s own Anne Caradice read to them, as did Pharmacist from Rainy River Drugs Sarah Berg, Gillon’s Insurance Broker Maureen Downs and RR Record Managing Editor Ken Johnston. However, Tetu is in need of more local celebrities to volunteer about fifteen minutes of their time to read to the students. To do so people can call Riverview at 852-3561.
The kids are very responsive to the reading and often interact actively. Last week Johnston read Mr. Wolf and the Ernormous Turnip by Jan Fearley. It dealt with a wolf, a frog prince, several princesses and how people should treat people with proper respect.
The kids asked and answered many questions and were eager to look at the special pages in the front of the book that talked about royal etiquette.