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New help for preschoolers

Newport News Libraries help coordinate new joint Mayors’ Book Club

The Newport News Public Library System is helping to coordinate the new joint Hampton-Newport News Mayors' Book Club, as well as recruiting volunteers who will read a book each month to students in preschool classrooms.

Newport News Mayor McKinley Price helped kickoff the Hampton-Newport News Mayors’ Book Club and Read for the Record on Oct. 6 by reading to children at the Watkins Early Childhood Center in Newport News.

Preschoolers in Newport News are getting new books and more people to read to them through a new program that kicked off Oct. 6. The Hampton-Newport News Mayors’ Book Club is designed to help get children ready to read by kindergarten. In Newport News, the program provides volunteer readers and new books to preschool students.

The City of Hampton and Hampton Mayor Molly Ward started the Mayor’s Book Club in 2008. The City of Newport News and Newport News Mayor McKinley Price joined the regional partnership this year, emphasizing the cities’ shared focus on early literacy.

The Newport News Public Library System is helping to coordinate the new joint program as well as recruiting volunteers who will read a book each month to students in preschool classrooms. Volunteers demonstrate that reading is fun and important and serve as role models. Students are then given a copy of that month’s book to keep. By the end of the preschool year, each child will have a personal home library of at least nine books.

“We recognize the importance of early literacy, and its impact on a child’s ability to succeed in school and throughout life,” said Izabela M. Cieszynski, director of the Newport News Public Library System. “The Hampton-Newport News Mayors’ Book Club is another way that the Library System is helping prepare young students for learning.”

The Library System’s other early literacy initiatives include weekly storytimes, which offer children as young as newborns a safe, fun environment to develop an early love of reading with stories, songs and crafts. In addition, the Library System’s early literacy outreach librarian brings books and suggestions for how to use them to locations such as early childhood centers, preschool special needs, childcare facilities, preschools and homecare throughout Newport News.

For more information about the Hampton-Newport News Mayors’ Book Club, call 757-727-2700 or go to www.hamptonmayorsbookclub.org.

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