Allan Appel
Congresswoman, cat, superintendant.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro refused to make a comment on whether she’ll recommend Dr. Seuss‘s The Cat in the Hat to her House Republican colleagues as they choose their next speaker in the coming days.
The book, whose theme is cleaning up one’s messes, was the centerpiece of an event at the Worthington Hooker Elementary School on Canner Street Monday.
There, in front of an enthusiastic crowd of 50 first graders, DeLauro, aided by an animated, bewhiskered, and barefooted Cat himself, read the book to the kids. In so doing she kicked off the 15th season of her Rosa’s Readers program.
The program encourages the joys and values of reading, especially reading with family members, by challenging first graders to read 20 books during the three month period being Nov. 1.
The kids who sign up log in their books with teachers and families, help design a book mark, if they want, and get a certificate celebrating the reading achievement at a bagels and muffin party in the spring.
About 30 schools are involved throughout the third congressional district, with a half dozen in New Haven, said DeLauro’s media representative Sara Lonardo.
On finishing Cat’s breathtaking tale of a remarkable clean-up, DeLauro told the kids that since 2000, 7,600 children have read more than 156,000 books. A collective first-grade gasp filled up the cozy library on the school’s second floor where the event took place.
The occasion also marked Worthington Hooker‘s winning a blue ribbon as one of the small handful of schools federally cited for strides it’s made in closing the minority — economic and racial — achievement gap.
Worthingon Hooker is one of four schools in the state and the only one in New Haven to be so honored, said the school’s K‑2 principal Dr. Evelyn Robles. On Nov. 9, she and the school’s overall principal Sheryl Hershonik and other staffers will be going to Washington, DC to receive the official award from outgoing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
On Monday, however, all attention was on the Cat, played with brio by DeLauro staffer Lou Mangini. Both he and Superintendent Garth Harries read sections of the book along with DeLauro and queried kids about the frenzied plot as it unfolded.
Harries, holding up the picture book to the rapt audience of kids, asked, “what’s he going to do next?” First-grader Vincent Sze said promptly, “he’s going to put a teapot on his head.”
Vincent (pictured to the right at center) and, by appearance of raised hands, all the kids in the audience, volunteered to sign up for this edition of Rosa’s Readers.
One of the first-grade teachers, Laura Nevard, offered that her kids are practicing what she described as their “reading stamina” — that is, being able to sustain the activity longer. Each kid has his own book bag too, and other activities, to which Rosa’s Readers can now be added.
Robles said the kids, many of whom are non-English language native speakers, should read in all languages. “We encourage kids to read in their language and share” the stories with others, she added.
“Reading is so much more than decoding,” said Harries, adding that the pleasures include learning new information, traveling places in the imagination, and sharing all that with others.
That sharing aspect of the program is particularly important to her, said DeLauro, who has four young grandkids to whom she reads. “A lot of kids are not read to every night, and helping to make that happen through Rosa’s Readers is a big aim of the program,” she added.
Harries said he was proud of Worthington Hooker’s achievements. The school has a reputation as being for the affluent, but he said that is not the case. The award’s significance is that it shows how Worthington Hooker opens all its kids’ minds to learning, he said.
About 27 different languages are spoken in Worthington Hooker’s student population, said Robles.
DeLauro vigorously poo-pooed a reporter’s suggestion that perhaps the Dr. Seuss book might be left on the desk of Speaker of the House hopeful Kevin McCarthy.
“They’ll [the Republicans] figure it out themselves,” she said.