Today was Cobblestone Elementary School’s first annual Celebration of Reading Day. An invitation was extended to Appeal-Democrat two weeks ago to have volunteers come and read a book to their classrooms.

When I saw the announcement on our bulletin, I had to find out if there was a deaf child or more that I could sign a book to. I love reading books and figured it was a good way to pass it on to the next generation. Even better if a deaf kid could enjoy my ASL story-telling. Much to my surprise, there was indeed one — just one deaf student. So I got the okay from my supervisor, Courtney Lopez, and drove over to Plumas Lake early this morning.

Plumas Lake seems quite a nice home community. There are park-like street medians and each community has a sign with the name of the community, although I saw a few that had missing letters — I think it was Three Rivers? The ones that were intact, were nice to look at. The community that Cobblestone Elementary School was in, had those green old-fashioned street post holding the street-signs at corners that seemed to hail from the Art Renassiance period.

At the Visitor check in, I found a name tag waiting for me. I picked up a Dr. Seuss book titled “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.” It looked interesting and I hoped the kids would find it entertaining.

I walked over and met Kara Wininger and two teacher assistants/parent educator, one of whom was Glenda Velasco. I remembered Glenda because I had seen her picture in the paper about 100 Days and I noticed there was a clipping of her on the classroom wall.

I was introduced to the five kids in the special education program. I told them I was deaf. Immediately, they looked at Dylan. Like Dylan, the deaf classmate. I think I saw Dylan’s eyes widen. I read the book to them in both ASL and voice. I asked Glenda to stand with me to make sure that the hearing kids would understand because I wasn’t sure of the quality of my speaking ability. Man, voicing English is hard. I like ASL for its illustrative storytelling.

I had been brought up in the Total Communication method, which had both signing and speech but I’ve never felt comfortable with speaking. ASL is my primary choice for communicating. The kids seemed to enjoy watching my signs and when they recognized one, they got excited! I am not sure how long it took, probably a hour or so. I wasn’t really watching the clock — time means nothing to me when I get into a story.

Poor Bartholomew had this strange thing going on with his hats. He kept trying to take a hat off, to give respect to the King, but there’d magically be one on his head. Bartholomew faced a reprimand by the King, two people trying to shoot arrows at him, magicians with cats chanting a spell on him that took 10 years to take effect, a hat maker that got spooked by Bartholomew’s magically appearing hats, and an execution! Finally, when he faced being pushed off the highest turret of the King’s palace, his hats began to change into the most beautiful and elaborate hat. The King bought his 500th hat for 500 pieces of gold. What a relief it must have been for Bartholomew to be free of the magical hats!

During the reading, I showed them the illustrations and counted the hats with them, asked them little questions along the way like “Where do you think Bartholomew is going?” and the kids would reply “The castle!” and point at the castle in the book.

I hope they enjoyed the reading. I think that reading books to the young generation fosters interest in reading. Growing up, I had teachers and family members reading books to me. My childhood was spent around books if I wasn’t outside playing.
I do hope the women who expressed interest in improving their signing will consider coming to Deaf Pizza on the first Thursday of each month. I mentioned that there is a Deaf teacher teaching ASL at Yuba College and that Deaf Pizza had deaf, hard of hearing, and ASL students from all ages. This month, Deaf Pizza is Thursday, March 6 at Pizza Hut on Colusa HWY next to Joann’s Crafts at 5 p.m. to whenever you feel like leaving. Most stick around until 9 p.m.

Thank you Cobblestone Elementary, for having me come by!

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