What’s your story?

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

The press at Cambridge school is working overtime, keeping on top of the imaginations and stories being created by students - and their families.

Swingset Press is the first project in a pilot Publish It! family literacy endeavor supported by the Valley Community Learning Association, the Department of Education and Cambridge school and Mount Saint Vincent University. “We’ve heard for many years how important it is to read to your child,” says Sophie Berube, one of two assistants hired to run the program. “Research is now showing it’s just as important to write and enjoy those skills.”

Berube and Jon Collins are at the school until May afternoons and evenings, and they encourage families to make an appointment to start on their own book. “Every family has a story,” says Collins. “One girl is in Mary’s Islanders, so her book was all about dancing. One girl brought her teddy bear to school and we took pictures of her and the bear reading and doing all the school things. “A book gives everyone an identity.”

Families gather up a dozen pictures relating to their child’s story, and the school’s computer lab is the “publishing house”: an easy-to-use template allows the authors to drop in pictures and write text, proofread their draft and then Collins and Berube prepare a quality, bound printout. “We hope to do the whole school,” Collins says. “The goal is to get the books into the libraries.”