A brush with danger

Here’s the illustration from the book that sparked the questions.

My friend Nicole Dotto and I both volunteer for Sit Stay Read (SSR), a literacy organization that encourages Chicago Public School kids to love to read. SSR uses dogs and volunteers in all sorts of clever ways: children read aloud to specially trained therapy dogs, human volunteers visit as “book buddies” to help individual kids, and people like me come as guest readers – the books we read to the kids always have something to do with, guess what? Dogs!

I haven’t been able to visit the schools lately with Whitney like I usually do, but…Nicole to the rescue! She read Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound out loud to fourth-graders at the schools she was at this month, and sent me a fun homemade card listing the questions the kids asked when they got to the page where Hanni prevents me from falling into a hole. “What a perfect treat!” Nicole wrote. I had to agree, and thought I’d share some of those questions with you blog readers as a treat for you, too:

• What if there is a hole and her dog doesn’t see it?
• But what if she just doesn’t?
• What if Hanni falls into the hole first because she’s looking at a bird?
• After she falls, how does she find her toothbrush?

I bet whoever asked that last question has a great smile. Gotta love a kid who, even in the face of danger, keeps her mind focused on dental hygiene.

How can that dog keep you safe?

At Oglesby last week.

Last Friday Whitney and I visited an elementary school in a South Side Chicago neighborhood that’s been the center of a national focus on violence and guns the past couple of weeks. That very day, President Obama was at a Chicago high school nearby giving a speech about his new antipoverty policy initiatives. Our mission at Oglesby Elementary was far less controversial: Whitney and I were there to talk about writing, Seeing Eye dogs, and what it’s like to be blind. Judy Spock (a writer in my Thursday afternoon memoir-writing class) has a neighbor who works for a Montessori program at Oglesby, and the two of them accompanied Whitney and me on the visit.

Judy sat at my side while I talked to the kids, and as she rhythmically flipped through Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to show off the beautiful illustrations, she noticed a boy in the class had his hand up. “Can you color?” he asked. I could, I said, but I’m not very good at staying in the lines. “Can you paint?” I had to consider this one a bit. “I could get the paint on the brush,” i said. “But whatever I painted would be kind of, well…abstract.” Next question: “What’s a stract? Hmmmmm. “I guess I meant it’d be a mess.”

The finger-painted wreath.

The class grew quiet. I didn’t have to see to know their little minds were thinking, thinking, thinking. All of a sudden another hand shot up. “You could finger paint, couldn’t you?” a little boy asked. “We made a wreath!” And just like that, all of them started talking at once. “It’s right there! Behind you! We painted it with our fingers” I turned around to look. Don’t ask me why.

“No, over there! Not there! Behind you! On the wall!” Judy to my rescue. She turned around, looked up at the wall behind us, and described a huge piece of paper with a beautiful green circle of painted handprints: a holiday wreath. The boy was right. I could do that. “Maybe you and that dog could come next Christmas to try,” one of them said, which led to the next question. “How does the dog know where to go?”

I’m the one who tells Whitney what direction to go to get our errands done. I told the kids how we travel one block, she stops at the curb, I tell her,  ”Good girl, Whitney!” Then I give her a direction. “Whitney, left!” She turns left, I tell her how smart she is, and we go to the next curb. “Atta girl, Whitney! Good girl!” I say, then give a direction. “Whitney, right!” Whitney turns right, and we’re off again. I explained how I listen very carefully for traffic when we have to cross a street. When I think it’s safe, I command “Forward!” Whitney looks both ways, and once she’s made sure it’s safe to go, she leads me across. More questions followed:

• How do you wash up?
• If you can’t see, how do you know where the doorknob is?
• If you can’t see, can you play any games?
• Did that dog write the book by itself or did you help the dog type it into the computer?
• What if you got to a hole in the sidewalk and the dog took you around and right then a big bus came by an beeped really loud and you fell in to the hole?
• How do you know where to press your fingers on the piano if you can’t see the sheet of paper?
• Why is your hair so blonde?

That last question gave me an opportunity to tell them how I tap the lane marker to keep my place when I swim laps, and how the chlorine in the pool makes my hair turn lighter . “Do I look like Beyonce?” They chorused a joyful, “Yes!”

Just as it was getting time to leave, one girl asked, “How can that dog keep you safe?” She must not have been listening when I’d explained our routine at the stoplight, or what Whitney does to prevent us from falling into holes. I repeated my story about Whitney checking both ways before we cross a street, and then Judy and her neighbor led Whitney and me out to the car. We spent the entire drive home yammering about the delightful and curious kids at Oglesby and how thoughtful their questions were.

It was only when I got home and turned on the radio that I realized that last question might have been about a different sort of safety. The radio story said that in his remarks that afternoon, President Obama had paid tribute to 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who had attended a high school near Oglesby. “Too many of our children are being taken away from us,” the president said. “last year there were 443 murders with a firearm on the streets of this city, and 65 of those victims were 18 and under. So that’s the equivalent of a Newtown every four months.” The school where the kids want me to come back and fingerpaint is located at 7646 S Green St., right where the Englewood, Auburn and Gresham neighborhoods meet, and on the Friday we visited, the Chicago Red Eye reported:

In Englewood, a 29-year-old man was shot to death Friday in the 6900 block of South Morgan Street, officials said.
Englewood has recorded three homicides so far this year. This South Side community area logged 21 homicides last year, RedEye found.

Oglesby Montessori is a free, open enrollment, elementary school that is a part of public (non charter) Chicago Public Schools. You can help them grow by letting Barbara Byrd-Bennett, CEO of Chicago Public Schools (773-553-1500) and Mayor Rahm Emanuel (312-744-3300) know that the Auburn-Gresham/Englewood neighborhood deserves an ever-growing and expanding Public Montessori school.

Missing: 30 million words

As a kid, spending three days with a bunch of schoolteachers would have sounded like the ultimate form of punishment. I guess wisdom really does come with age — when the Illinois Reading Council contacted me last Fall to see if I’d be interested in coming to their annual conference and spend time with thousands of teachers from across the state, I considered it a privilege.

That's me at the SCBWI booth. Whitney's under the table. (Photo by Cheryl May.)

My sisters Cheryl and Marilee accompanied Whitney and me on the trip from Chicago, and when we stepped off the train in Springfield, our driver Brian was there with a sign. “It says your name!” they exclaimed, describing the B-E-T-H F-I-N-K-E in bold lettering. I felt like a star.

The star treatment continued throughout this well-organized and well-attended three-day conference. Award-winning author Esther Hershenhorn had published an extremely flattering post about Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound just days before the conference started. Attention from Esther’s Teaching Authors blog brought a lot of teachers to the Illinois Society of Childrens Book Authors and Illustrators (SCBWI) booth to meet new Seeing Eye dog Whitney and me. I Brailled out words for the teachers to take home to their students along with a bookmark of the Braille alphabet. I could almost hear the wheels spinning in the teachers heads, conjuring up ways to use Braille to encourage their students back home to read print.

I gave a presentation, enjoyed time with the seven lively teachers at my table as one of the featured guests at the author luncheon, and attended a few sessions, too. Everywhere I went I heard dedicated teachers asking questions, looking for suggestions, sharing ideas, all of them oh so eager to learn tnew techniques and methods to motivate their students.

My Chicago neighbor Margaret MacGregor is one of those dedicated teachers, and so is my sister Marilee Amodt. Margaret teaches in the Chicago Public Schools, and Marilee teaches in the Orlando Public Schools. The two of them teamed up to lead a session about teaching vocabulary to students from lower-income families, and on our train back to Chicago Margaret mentioned how important it is for kids to learn a lot of vocabulary words before they start school.

“Books have a lot of words in them that kids don’t hear spoken out loud,” Margaret said. In fact, children’s books use twice as many words as kids hear

That's Margaret on the left, with Marilee, before their presentation. (Photo by Cheryl May.)

on regular TV. And even, get this, twice as many, like, words, like than, like, college students like, use when they are, like, talking to each other.

Margaret told me about the Hart-Risley Study, which says low-income children hear, on average, 30 million fewer words spoken than their more affluent peers before they turn four. Margaret was not misspeaking, and that is not a typo. I looked it up when we got home. 30 million fewer words.

It seemed particularly fitting to be listening to Margaret and Marilee’s presentation the weekend before Whitney and I head to Hendricks Elementary School on Chicago’s Southside. Hendricks is one of the Chicago Public Schools participating in the Sit Stay Read! (SSR) program I volunteer for. In order for a school to participate in Sit Stay Read!, 95 percent or more of the students enrolled must qualify for the National School Breakfast program. The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Center for Literacy helped Sit Stay Read! design the program to coordinate with school curriculum — it’s meant to improve children’s reading fluency, encourage them to become successful readers, inspire them to explore the world through books, and help them learn to respect people and animals. A Chicago Tribune story by Rick Kogan explains:

SSR’s mission is fueled by sad statistics: On average, a child growing up in a middle-class family will have the benefit of as many as 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture-book reading before he or she enters school, while the child in a low-income family will have 25 hours.

Sit Stay Read! uses dogs and volunteers in all sorts of clever ways: children read aloud to specially trained therapy dogs, human volunteers visit as “book buddies” to help individual kids, and people like me come as guest readers – the books we read to the kids always have something to do with, guess what? Dogs!

Guest readers also teach the kids about possible careers – when members of Chicago’s Lyric Opera visit, they read The Dog Who Sang at the Opera to the kids. Firefighters read Firehouse Dog during visits, and visiting police officers read about police dogs. I was asked to come with Whitney and talk about being a writer.

I’m looking forward to visiting Hendricks Monday. It’ll be Whitney’s first experience as a Sit Stay Read! dog, and I hope my stories of learning new ways to read and write after losing my sight might encourage the students at Hendricks to keep trying, too.

Not in that neighborhood

Usually when I volunteer to visit a Chicago Public School, a fellow volunteer drives us there. This Monday, though, Harper and I are taking a cab. “We’ll make sure there’s someone at the school waiting to meet you at the door,” the volunteer coordinator told me. “You don’t want to just get dropped off, not in that neighborhood.”

I gotta admit. Her warning scared me. And after I thought about it for a few seconds, my fear turned to sadness. If it’s not safe for Harper and me to step out of a cab in that neighborhood, can it possibly be safe for an eight-year-old to go to school there? Guess we’ll find that out when we meet the second-graders at Manierre School Monday.

Manierre is located right across from the Marshall Field Garden Apartments (a subsidized housing project) and is one of the Chicago Public Schools participating in the Sit Stay Read! (SSR) program I volunteer for. In order for a school to participate in Sit Stay Read!, 95 percent or more of the students enrolled must qualify for the National School Breakfast program. The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Center for Literacy helped Sit Stay Read! design the program to coordinate with school curriculum — it’s meant to improve children’s reading fluency, encourage them to become successful readers, inspire them to explore the world through books, and help them learn to respect people and animals. A Chicago Tribune story by Rick Kogan explains:

SSR’s mission is fueled by sad statistics: On average, a child growing up in a middle-class family will have the benefit of as many as 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture-book reading before he or she enters school, while the child in a low-income family will have 25 hours.

Sit Stay Read! uses dogs and volunteers in all sorts of clever ways: children read aloud to specially trained therapy dogs, human volunteers visit as “book buddies” to help individual kids, and people like me come as guest readers – the books we read to the kids always have something to do with, guess what? Dogs!

Guest readers also teach the kids about possible careers – when members of Chicago’s Lyric Opera visit, they read The Dog Who Sang at the Opera to the kids. Firefighters read Firehouse Dog during visits, and visiting police officers read about police dogs. I was asked to come with Harper and talk about being a writer. I hope my stories of learning new ways to read and write after losing my sight might encourage them to keep trying.

I’m looking forward to visiting Manierre Monday. It’ll be Harper’s first experience as a Sit Stay Read! dog, and I’m confident he’ll guide me safely from the cab to the school’s front door. Visiting other Sit Stay Read! schools with Hanni taught me there’s far more to these neighborhoods than gangs and crime. Kids live there, too. Thoughtful kids. Resourceful kids. Sweet kids.

Thanks to the generosity of my publisher--Blue Marlin Publications--all the kids in the Sit Stay Read programs Hanni and I visited the past few years went home with a free copy of "Hanni and Beth, Safe & Sound."

Visiting Chicago Public Schools

I wonder. If I could see, would I have been afraid to visit the Chicago public schools Hanni and I went to these past couple weeks? Volunteers drove us to each school we visited, and we were so busy discussing the kids I was about to meet that no one mentioned what the neighborhoods looked like outside the car window. It wasn’t until all three visits were over that I did my research. Turns out we were in neighborhoods I hear about in gut-wrenching stories on Chicago nightly news. Little Village. North Lawndale. East Garfield Park.

Thanks to the generosity of my publisher--Blue Marlin Publications--all the kids who participated in Sit Stay Read went home with a free copy of "Hanni and Beth, Safe & Sound."

At one school, I was told the kids never get to go out for recess. “Gangs,” the teacher told me. “Too dangerous for them to be outside.

Safe inside the schools, the kids were like any others their age. They wanted to know how old Hanni was. They told me stories about older relatives who were losing their sight. One girl raised her hand and said, “I think you’ll like this poem.” It was one of her favorites from the third-grade reading textbook. “I’m going to read it out loud to you.” She did. And she was right. I loved the poem. After I explained how Hanni looks both ways for traffic before she leads me across downtown streets, a third-grader had a question. “Is your dog brave?” he wondered. His question reminded me. We were in a rough neighborhood. This little boy probably knew firsthand how hard it can be to be brave sometimes.

Two of these schools Hanni and I visited participate in a literacy program called Sit Stay Read! (SSR). In order for a school to participate in Sit Stay Read!, 95 percent or more of the students enrolled must qualify for the National School Breakfast program. The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Center for Literacy helped Sit Stay Read! design the program to coordinate with school curriculum — it’s meant to improve children’s reading fluency, encourage them to become successful readers, inspire them to explore the world through books, and help them learn to respect people and animals.

The school we visited in Little Village wasn’t part of the Sit Stay Read! program. There’s a waiting list for schools who’d like to participate. The Little Village school would certainly qualify: Every single kid at that school participates in the National School Breakfast program, which means every single kid at that school is from a very poor family.

Here's just one of the thoughtful, handmade thank-you cards I received from the kids I visited.

My friend Pam teaches science at that school, so I offered to come with Hanni and talk to the kids about the senses. They must have really been listening! Days after my visit a package came in the mail. Each student had carefully glued yarn onto construction paper to create words I could read using my sense of touch. “Thank you, Hanni and Beth” and “It was nice having you.” Feeling the letters reminds me that there’s more to those neighborhoods than gangs and crime. Kids live there, too. Thoughtful kids. Resourceful kids. Sweet kids.

Sit Stay Read! on NBC TV

A literacy organization Hanni and I volunteer with in Chicago was featured on the What Works segment of NBC Nightly news Monday evening.

Hanni and I got involved with Sit Stay Read! (SSR) after meeting the Executive Director and co-founder at a book signing last Fall. She keeps a blog about SSR and reports that their mailbox is flooded with good wishes and inquiries from folks all over the WORLD (hello Melbourne!) who saw the feature and are eager now to bring Sit Stay Read programs to kids in their cities.

The Sit Stay Read! web site explains the program like this:

Reading aloud is a critical component of early childhood literacy. Children who have difficulty reading have an especially hard time reading aloud in front of peers and adults. SIT STAY READ programs allow children to read aloud to specially trained therapy dogs. The dogs increase confidence and generate excitement.

The SSR director asked if Hanni and I might want to be Guest Readers/listeners at a Sit Stay Read school program in the Chicago Public Schools sometime. “Our kids would be thrilled to hear you, “she said. They’ve had opera singers, firefighters, poets and other professionals as guests, she said. “You and Hanni would be a wonderful addition.”

Who could resist a pitch like that? We said yes, and in March Hanni and I visited Hendricks Elementary School on Chicago’s south side. Hanni and I had just been to a very wealthy school district in the Chicago suburbs the week before, and the contrast was striking. One thing that was similar in both schools, though: the kids had the same curiosity, and they asked similar questions. You know, things like “How do you know if it’s time to wake up?” and “Is it scary being blind?”

Beth and Hanni both enjoy watching the White Sox. Illustration from "Hanni and Beth, Safe & Sound."

Hendricks is located near White Sox Park, and since Safe & Sound has an illustration of Hanni and me watching a ballgame, the kids had all sorts of questions about that. “What if you got hit by a ball?” I told them we try to sit under netting. “What if there’s a hole in the net?” I told them Mike usually comes with us to ballgames, so he warns me if a ball is coming. “What if he is going to get hot dogs so he isn’t there and the ball comes?” the ballgame questions went on and on. And it was really, really fun.

My publisher at Blue Marlin Publications watched the Sit Stay Read! segment on NBC from their home on Long Island. Her son Jude Tucker watched it with her, and he was sure the boy on the segment was reading Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound — even though he could only make out a blue back cover! Gotta love my supportive fans on Long Island!