|
Missouri Humanities Council e-News | February 2010| View Online | ||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||
Push (the book), Precious (the movie), and a Parent's HopeBy Julie Douglas, Family Program Specialist
In a nutshell, Precious Jones is an African-American teen-ager who has been failed by everyone in her life, from her dysfunctional and abusive parents to the NYC school system. Written in Precious' own voice, the book gives the reader an intimate look at the sad, lonely life of this young woman. When we meet her, she is pregnant at 16 by her father (the first of Precious' babies was born when she was 12 years old.) Precious begins taking classes at an alternative program called Each One Teach One and discovers the lifeboat that is literacy. To me, the most poignant message in this book is that literacy can literally save a life. Despite all of the horrors that Precious faces, she is able to recognize that one spark of hope…learning to read. And she wants this powerful skill not only for herself, but even more so for her unborn child. She begins by reciting the alphabet to the baby growing inside her. She vows that he will not be “stupid” (her word) like she is, but will know his numbers and letters and know how to read. From the day he is born, she talks to him and tells him stories and recites the alphabet. She holds books up for him to see. She understands that these seemingly small acts are the key to her son having a better life than she had. READ from the START introduces parents to that magical key of reading to young children. Through reading and discussing children’s books with a group of fellow parents, participants experience for themselves the transformative power of a story. In the past year, over 1700 parents and caregivers have received encouragement, creative ideas for sharing stories, and a set of exceptional children’s books while attending a READ from the START program. Listen to what they have to say. I learned that reading to a child is the best thing you can do for them. I read books, even though my baby isn't brought into the world yet, I know he hears me. I learned how wonderful it is to cuddle and read a story. I will read with more enthusiasm to my child. ~parent, Appleton Several parents responded that they read and had a lot of fun reading for the first time! One young dad returned and said he had read to his baby boy that week. I told him to keep reading! He grinned and said, "I don’t read too good." I told him the little guy wouldn't mind, and besides he would get better. Practice makes perfect. I asked the parents to share what they had read to their children that week and the experiences. I let this go on until the parents stopped sharing. There was a spark in their eyes and excitement as they shared about their reading experiences. Bringing the excitement of reading to families is what RFTS is all about. [Return to Passages Front Page] Also in This Issue:
|
||||||||||
 Published monthly by the Missouri Humanities Council, a tax-exempt, non-profit organization
affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Federal agency.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Permission to reprint with this attribution, "Missouri Humanities Council, mohumanities.org" and email or post notice of use.
|
If you haven’t read the novel Push by Sapphire (on which the movie Precious is based), get to the library right now and check it out. Be forewarned; it is raw and deals with incest, poverty, self-hatred, and illiteracy. But that said, it is a hopeful story that I literally could not put down once my friend convinced me to give it a try.