The Mayor's Office for Education and Children partnered with Denver city council and Denver board of education representatives Oct. 2 to celebrate Jumpstart's Read for the Record, a national campaign designed to break the world record for the number of adults and children reading the same book on the same day, while also working to break the cycle of illiteracy.
City council members and Denver Board of Education members read the book
Corduroy by
Don Freedman to early education students in Denver Head Start classrooms.
For Denver's participation, the Pearson Foundation contributed 2,500 books in English and Spanish, enough for each Head Start student to receive their own copy of the book to take home.
"Current research overwhelmingly supports the importance of facilitating early and emerging literacy skills in preschool-age children as a critical foundation for literacy development," said Dr.
Maria Guajardo, Executive Director of Denver Mayor's Office for Education and Children. "Jumpstart's Read for the Record is a positive way to raise awareness about the importance of early childhood literacy skills."
The 2008 campaign is designed to encourage young people, their families and educators everywhere to set another Guinness World Record by creating the largest shared reading experience ever for the most children reading with an adult the same book on the same day.
Last year, Jumpstart's Read for the Record raised more than $1 million to directly support and expand the organization's early education work in low-income communities.