Reading something beautiful:

Guest readers visit Jefferson classrooms

Ashley Hunter
ECB Publishing, Inc.

Everyone is an artist, and everyone can do their part in creating beauty around them.
That was the lesson taught in Maybe Something Beautiful, the selected book that was read to various elementary grade classes at Jefferson Somerset on Tuesday, Jan. 29.
As part of Jefferson Somerset's Literacy Week (Monday, Jan. 28 through Friday, Feb. 1), guest readers visited the school in order to read a book filled with vibrant colors, dancing words and picturesque illustrations to varying elementary grades.
The guest readers gathered in the school lobby at 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 29, and were given their books and classroom assignments before they were escorted to their prospective classrooms to read.
The selected reading material, Maybe Something Beautiful, is written by F. Isabella Campoy and Theresa Howell, and featured full-page illustrations from artist Rafael Lopez on every glossy leaf.
The story within the pages told of a based-on-truth account of how the citizens of a San Diego, CA, neighborhood helped bring color and life to the place where they lived through a sharing and spreading of art.
In Maybe Something Beautiful, Campoy, Howell and Lopez introduce Mira, a young artist who sees possibilities in blank paper and loves to give away her pictures.
The authors and artists deliver a clear, uplifting message about the power of art to revitalize people and their surroundings.
The guest readers were many of the familiar faces around Jefferson County and Monticello, such as elected officials, community leaders and law enforcement officers.
After each reader had finished reading their copy of Maybe Something Beautiful to the attentive elementary students, the readers were presented with a gift as a token of thanks from the class they had read to.
Other events that took place during Literacy Week were a Maybe Something Beautiful art project and a Teddy Bear Tea Party for parents to attend and read with their children.