JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi Public Broadcasting is encouraging all of Mississippi to get involved in Read for the Record® – the nation’s largest shared reading campaign – on Oct. 19 to help break the record of total participants who read the same book on the same day.
Read for the Record® is the premiere national campaign for Jumpstart, a national organization working to ensure preschool children will succeed in kindergarten. Annually, Read for the Record® mobilizes about two million individuals of all ages in classrooms and communities in every state. The campaign focuses on building early literacy and language skills.
MPB Education staffers along with America Reads-Mississippi AmeriCorps members will read this year’s book Quackers in classrooms across the state Oct. 19. Quackers by Liz Wong is an endearing story about a kitten who grows up believing he’s a duck until the day he meets another kitten. Students from Dawson Elementary in Jackson will also visit MPB’s office to celebrate Read for the Record®.
Anyone – parents, grandparents, students, business leaders, etc. – who wants to participate in the shared reading experience Oct. 19 can pledge to do so on MPB’s website at www.mpbonline.org/readfortherecord/. Signing up will give MPB an accurate count of all involved in Mississippi. The goal is to have more than 60,000 total participants.
“We understand that school readiness and literacy are very important in our state, and MPB is participating in this initiative in order to increase school readiness and to encourage communities to get involved,” said Maggie Stevenson, MPB Deputy Director of Education.
Quackers is available in English and Spanish. A free downloadable version of the book is available at www.jstart.org/read-for-the-record.
The Mississippi Alliance for Arts Education and America Reads-Mississippi are partners with MPB for this year’s campaign.
For more information regarding MPB, visit www.mpbonline.org.
