“Do you see anyone here who looks like their parents dragged them here?” asked Pamela R. Lopes, eyebrows raised at the entrance of a nook in the Whalley police substation.
Behind her crawled not cops, not criminals, but children and parents from the neighborhoods — members of a revived Youth Reading Club.
It’s not their duty to shove books down the children’s throats, organizer Marcus Paca said. Paca and Cherice Dykes, members of the Whalley/Edgewood/Beaver Hills (WEB) Community Management Team, have revived the weekly club on Saturday afternoons. Paca is also running for alderman, with Dykes as his campaign manager. They’ve drawn a crowd of participants, including adult volunteers, to the cozy library room through word of mouth, flyers, and Paca’s aldermanic campaigning.
“Right off the bat, he tells me he loves to draw,” said Dykes, crouched with Keith Russell (pictured), 6, as he drew a mustache on the foam shark sticker adhered to his bookmark. At the lone table in the room’s belly, Ben Ziebel, 6, and Russell’s older brother James played Sorry! with volunteer Julie Braun.
“We couldn’t eliminate the [Youth Reading Club] room and let it become a cop rec room,” reasoned Paca. Buttressed by a donation of 300 books from the University of Connecticut’s Gear Up program, Paca threw a promotional block party to jumpstart the program and bought snacks out of his own pocket. Now, the program is fully backed by the management team. With all the volunteer help, Paca hopes the program will extend into the school year.
Paca (pictured playing Battleship! with Ben and Ben’s mother) indicated the Russell brothers behind him. Their mother Angela laughed and said if she hadn’t brought the boys here, she’d be looking for some other way to occupy them that morning. Paca called the revived book club “the community’s project,” not his.
Lee-Ann Ziebel lives on the corner of Sherman and Edgewood Avenues. Her six year-old Ben wasn’t reading. Ziebel told of hearing gunshots regularly near her home, and added that her son doesn’t go outside often.
“First of all, this is a safe environment,” nodded volunteer Lopes. “It’s a place where children can explore new possibilities.”
For Ben (pictured), a boy who can fill half a bookcase with his Dr. Seuss anthology, the program might just leave him with literary and social skills comprehensive enough to finally read them.