Bodacious Books Event Teaches Kids about the Joy of Reading

What type of eggs does Dr. Seuss character Sam like with his ham?

What does the ugly duckling grow up to be?

Who wrote the poem “Where the Sidewalk Ends”

These were just some of the questions that were part of the Bodacious Books show for Nanuet elementary school students on Tuesday night. The show, which was held at Nanuet High School and performed by three members of Agostino and Company from Long Island, was part of Parents as Reading Partners (PARP).

“This show is kind of designed to bring books alive,” said Michelle Mazzaro, Elementary PTA President. “It’s going to show the kids that if you read, you can get this excitement in your own mind and it will bring with it the excitement of reading. I’m hoping it kind of encourages them and I’m hoping it encourages the parents too to read with their kids. A lot people have the interpretation that, ‘Oh my child is a really strong reader, so I don’t need to read with them,’ and that’s not really true. It’s still nice to read with your child even if they’re a strong reader."

PARP is a state-wide program administered by the New York State PTA.  It encourages parents to read to their children each night to both educate the child and strengthen the parental-child bond. At Miller and Highview elementary schools, students over the next four weeks will be given a book to keep track of how many nights they read with their parents. Students who come to school on Mondays having read five of the seven days in the previous week get special prizes. PARP will also be helming several programs in the schools themselves, such as the Bodacious Books event.

The main portion of the program was a game show called “Have You Read It?”. The male character this time asked questions to the audience about different children’s books, pitting the children against their parents. The goal was in part to teach youths in the crowd about books they might not have known about before and to get these kids excited about reading them. Two kids from the audience were invited up to the stage as “scorekeepers,” with books being used to keep track of each team’s scores. As the point totals increased, the pile of books in front of each scorekeeper got larger.  The main female actor helped put the books in their appropriate piles.

During halftime of the game show, the main male actor read a famous Shel Silverstein poem called “Jimmy Jet and his TV Set”. The poem, which was then acted out by a third member of the group, is about a young man who watches so much television that he soon turns into a television set himself. The main male actor told the crowd that it is okay to watch television sometimes and that many times those shows are actually based off of books. Thus, he told the kids in the audience, if they like a certain movie or television show they should read the books that the movie or show is based on. However, he said, watching too much television can be unhealthy, as he demonstrated with the Silverstein poem.

Then the actors went into the crowd to ask both children and adults what their favorite books were. Again, this aimed to give the kids in the audience ideas for what books to read next. Some of the answers given were Diary of  Wimpy Kid, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Charlotte’s Web, and the Encyclopedia Brown books. Indeed some parents in the audience, like Karen Bourgeois, came out to the show to learn about new books she could read to her son Joseph.

“I brought my son so that he can enjoy books more,” she said. “I wanted him to see the PARP reading program so that he would learn titles and talk to me about books he wanted to read.”

After the game show, which the children won 18-9, the main male and female actors picked audience members to help act out the classic fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk.” This version of the tale had a few book-related twists, however. Jack and his mother go off to a PARP event while the magic beans grow in their backyard, and when Jack climbs the beanstalk and tries to hide from the giant, he hides behind a table of books. The male actor, playing the Giant among other roles, even pulls out his Grimm’s Fairy Tales book to get his famous “Fee-Fi-Fo -Fum” line correct.

All of this was focused on showing that reading can be entertaining. And according to Missy Vanderploeg, co-chair for PARP who attended the event with her daughter Maddy, the event was successful in this goal.

“It was cute, it was informational. It gives us some ideas, and things that we can do that are fun. Because reading is fun.”

One student, Kaitlyn Smith, enjoyed the Jack and the Beanstalk skit.

"There was book reading, we played games and they had the audience come up and help," she said, adding that she liked the story about the "boy that turned into a tv and got an antennae."

"I thought it was good because they were teaching them about reading and going to the library," said Debbie, Kaitlyn's mother.

"They’re making it fun for them," said Suzanne Diaz, another mother. "Whenever you incorporate games, the kids really like it."

 "It was a good event and there was a lot of participation," added mom Kelly Burti.

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