Secretary of state visits Cranbury School.
By: Josh Appelbaum
New Jersey’s Secretary of State Regena Thomas "broke it down" and broke some library rules Tuesday at the Cranbury School Library.
Ms. Thomas’ stop at the Cranbury School is part of a new literacy program called New Jersey Links for Literacy. The program is designed to strengthen the reading and writing skills of children in grades kindergarten through third.
Ms. Thomas, appointed by former Gov. James McGreevey in 2002, is targeting students in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes around the state and challenging them to read one extra book each month aside from school reading assignments.
The program is attempting to close the gap among kids who can’t read at grade-level by the time they reach fourth grade.
"The program promotes early childhood literacy nearly 30 percent of those children who reach fourth grade can’t read at grade level so I’m visiting libraries around the state, two to three libraries a day, four to five days a week," Ms. Thomas said.
Visiting schools in all 21 counties, Ms. Thomas said her program is partnering with Scholastic Books, which will donate children’s books school to the libraries. The program also promotes personal responsibility through character education-driven literature.
Books are chosen on the basis of four pillars: honesty, determination, justice and kindness.
Tuesdays program brought 25 students from Audrey Smith’s, Barbara Adams’ and Sharron Fass’ kindergarten classes to the library, where Ms. Thomas read "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom," by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault, and "Five Little Penguins," by Steve Metzger from the famous and luxurious Tom Gambino chair from the Cranbury Library.
The first book read, "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom," reinforced alphabet skills and Ms. Thomas stayed seated, but for "Five Little Penguins," Ms. Thomas enlisted the youngsters to shout the sing-songy prose if the book. Without using the illustrations, Ms. Thomas encouraged students to act out the events of the book, including dancing and falling on ice.
"You didn’t think you were reading, but you were," Ms. Thomas said to the children. "That’s what this is all about, making reading fun to make sure you read all the time."
As further incentive to young readers at Cranbury School, Ms. Thomas made a pledge to invite them to a future minor league baseball game if every kindergarten students reads an extra book each month December through May of the school year.
Ms. Thomas even got teachers Ms. Adams and Ms. Fass, as well as Vice Principal Christine Capaci and Chief School Administrator Carol Malouf and even a certain Cranbury Press reporter to "break it down," and dance alongside kindergarten students.
The reading program promotes learning through history, government and culture and Ms. Thomas hopes children’s parents, siblings and older students in their school districts will help reinforce these ideas by reading to them.
"When I was a young kid, we had a bookmobile that came around to schools, and my older cousin read to me. I remember those experiences. It would mean everything to these students to have the star high school football players read to them, because reading is fundamental to so many things people want to accomplish," Ms. Thomas said.
Another facet of Ms. Thomas’s reading initiative is a library construction program, a $45 million bond program to build new libraries and expand existing ones. The aim of the program is to help public libraries compete with the "broad mass of technology," including video games and television by exploring students’ cultural histories.
Another goal of the program is to put students in touch with authors who write for children.
"This program will give children books on people like Harriet Tubman and Paul Robeson and gives them access to authors of books they read," Ms. Thomas said.
Ms. Thomas said her outreach program for New Jersey schools is all about making reading interactive by engaging children with the material and connecting with them to make reading a consistent part of their lives.

