The Just Read, Florida! Office and the Florida Department of Education (FDOE), in partnership with other FDOE offices, school districts, state organizations and agencies, are celebrating the tenth annual statewide Celebrate Literacy Week, Florida!

Celebrate Literacy Week, Florida! 2018 is this week, the week of January 22-26, 2018.

Indian River County kicked of its Literacy Week at the Treasure Coast Elementary School (TCE) on Monday morning in Sebastian.

(TCE is the home of the Pirates.  Arrgh is Pirate talk.)

The goal of this year’s Celebrate Literacy Week, Florida! is to promote literacy and excellent reading habits in the students of Florida.

This year, the Celebrate Literacy Week, Florida! 2018 theme is Find Yourself in a Book!

With this theme in mind, all schools were encouraged to connect to a book and a book character.

Roughly 20 people were invited to attend the opening Literacy Week ceremony and then read a book of their choice to an elementary school class.  Those who read were matched-up with a student who escorted them to a classroom.

The opening ceremony began with TCE principal Elizabeth Tetreault welcoming guests and extending a special thank you to Superintendent Dr. Mark J. Rendell for selecting  TCE to kick-off the week.

Then Ms. Tetreault introduced the TCE choral.

While the choral was performing selected students were sitting in the back of the auditorium with clip boards which spelled out in big letters the last name of their assigned reader and where and which classroom they would go to.

 

In Ms. Durrant’s third grade classroom a reader read chapter 111, “The Donuts,” of Robert McCluskey’s 1949 book Homer Price.

Homer Price

Robert McCluskey was an American writer and illustrator of children’s books. He both wrote and illustrated nine picture books and won two Caldecott Medals. His best-known work is the children’s picture book, Make Way For Ducklings, set in Boston.

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Homer Price’s Uncle Ulysses had a “lunch room” and “had advanced ideas and a weakness for buying labor saving devices”, to include automatic toasters, coffee makers and a dish washer.

His latest device was an automatic doughnut maker.

 

Uncle Ulysses asked Homer to put two mechanical pieces in place in the machine and mix some doughnut batter while he went to “fritter” with the sheriff in the barber shop.

As Homer began to mix the batter a very wealthy women with a fur coat and expensive jewelry and her chauffeur came in to the lunch room for a light snack.  When she saw Homer mixing the batter, she insisted on helping him because she knew the best recipe for donuts.

After placing the batter in the machine, Homer turned it on and watched it make donuts. After a dozen or so donuts named down the chute, he decided to turn it off.

But, OH NO!  Homer must have put the mechanical pieces in the wrong place because the machine would not stop.  It continued to make so many donuts that Homer and a customer, Mr. Gabby, were running out of places to put them.

 

Uncle Ulysses coming back to the lunch room with the sheriff.

And then, all of a sudden, the wealthy woman and her chauffeur burst into the lunch room and announced she had lost her diamond bracelet in the batter.  That meant it was in one of the donuts.

They knew a limousine but not a chauffeur.

They all named their favorite donut.

And seemed to connect to a book and a book character.