Books Made for Walking

A historic walking tour offers kids a perfect excuse for reading

By Louise Kant and Brenda Evans -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2004

Late last summer, Brenda Evans, the children's librarian at Madison-Jefferson County Public Library in Madison, IN, asked volunteer Louise Kant if she was interested in reviving an old book-buddy program. Kant was thrilled with the prospect, but wanted to add a new dimension. So she devised a Reading/Walking Book Buddies program that would incorporate an educational walking tour of the town's many historic sites.

Once Kant got the green light from Evans, both approached Nancy Strandmark, a counselor at nearby Eggleston Elementary School, and worked out the details. The planning team limited the number of participants to a manageable number of 20 students. Teachers chose 10 first and second graders who needed mentoring, and 10 students from fifth grade volunteered as their reading coaches. Once the children received parental permission, they were given library cards. Then Kant contacted various museum curators and other historic sites to see if they would participate. All gladly offered tours and reading rooms for free and were enthusiastic about having a group of students reading at their sites for half an hour or more each week.

The six-week reading program began in mid-September, a time when the weather is most predictable. Kant and Evans, accompanied by a few parent volunteers, picked up the group after school. Each child was given a book, a nametag, and a snack, and then everyone took a leisurely walk to a historic site. Kant selected and signed out more than 20 books the first week and drove them to the site earlier in the day so that all had plenty of titles to choose from. Since the books were geared toward enticing younger kids to read, obvious choices included Chicken Sunday (Philomel, 1992) by Patricia Polacco, Pumpkin, Pumpkin (Greenwillow, 1986) by Jeanne Titherington, and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (Harper & Row, 1985) by Laura Numeroff. Younger and older students were always paired, and as they walked, they discussed their books, school, or various other topics.

A guide at the Costigan House, a Greek revival house built in 1850, gave the first tour, and afterward, kids sat on the floor in one of the parlors to read to each other. Adults were always on hand to assist with difficult words or help choose another book. The following week, at the Lanier Mansion, a state historic site, kids read on the back porch overlooking the Ohio River. On the third week, the group walked to the Jefferson County Historical Society Railroad Depot Museum and took turns reading to each other. As each pair finished their books, they filled out forms indicating how much they liked what they read. Then, everyone walked to the library, where students returned their books, chose new ones for the following week, and learned how to use the online catalog and check out books. The kids were also encouraged to practice reading their books aloud at home.

One week, while walking back to the library from the Madison Visitors Center, we voted on a topic for the following week. We settled on fairy tales, and students took out books such as Zomo the Rabbit (Harcourt, 1992) by Gerald McDermott.

For the final week, Kant and Evans met the kids at school and together they walked to the library auditorium for a farewell party with their families. There, they held a fairy-tale round-robin, where pairs of kids sat together and read in a circle. It turned out that the participants read a total of 85 books over six weeks. One fifth grader, a fairly proficient but unenthusiastic reader, now checks out stacks of books each week with his new library card. He also attends just about every library program for his age group and older.

This program, which costs about $50 for snacks and refreshments for the kids, provides a wonderful collaborative opportunity for schools and public libraries. But most gratifying of all is seeing students and their parents really enjoying a program that combines reading and a lot more.