BCALA NEWS Volume 41, Issue 3

Summer 2014

9

each of the participants.

Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, Frank E. Merriweather, Jr., Branch Library, N.Y.

The library will designate one weekend in conjunction with World Storytelling Day as ‘‘Celebrating Grand Families-Telling Our Stories Weekend,” with storytellers scheduled to talk about the importance and mechanics of storytelling.

Storytellers from Tradition Keepers- Black Storytellers of Western New York will encourage grandparents and their grandchildren to listen to the experts and then create a journal of their own stories. They also will be encouraged to talk to others to share their stories. The sessions, when given approval, will be audio taped and posted on the library

system website (www.BuffaloLib.org) as well as on other forms of social media, including Facebook and on CDs to reach out to others interested in the art of storytelling,

Two weeks following the program, the library will display the journals and or portions of the journals for public viewing at a program featuring another professional storyteller.

Each grant-winning library will receive $500, which will be used to supplement their Reading Is Grand! program. Funds may be used to purchase books, supplies and/or activities for their program based upon their use of creativity and originality. The Reading Is Grand!

Project is supported by BCALA. It was developed as part of 2009 – 2010

ALA President Camila Alire’s Family Literacy Focus Initiative, an initiative to encourage families in ethnically diverse communities to read and learn together. The 2014 Reading is Grand! Celebrating Grand-Families @ Your Library selection committee includes Chair Dr. Claudette S. McLinn, executive director, Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature, Inglewood, Calif.; Jerome Offord, immediate past president, BCALA; Carolyn Garnes, library consultant, Atlanta; Karen Lemmons, library media specialist, Detroit; and Brenda Hunter, retired librarian, Atlanta.