Library paints town REaD

The Narrogin library team is aiming to lift the town’s spirits with the Paint The Town REaD project.

PTTR is an Australia-wide charitable early literacy movement that encourages people to read with children from birth so they start school ready to learn.

Narrogin library services manager Kay Weaver said she had combined the PTTR project with the bear hunt trend gaining traction around the world.

“I wanted to connect the two together because we wanted to keep the momentum of the PTTR project going until COVID-19 is over,” she said.

“We thought we’d get on board by putting a teddy in our window so when children are walking past, they can have fun spotting teddies and then go and decorate their own house.”

The coronavirus crisis halted the library’s plans for an official launch for the project.

“We got on board with the project in January last year. The idea is that you have a paper mache egg and the children read and sing to it as it visited the schools here. It grows and develops because the children are reading to it,” Ms Weaver said.

“Then you have a hatching where your project mascot hatches out of the egg.”

Narrogin’s special mascot will be kept a secret until the hatching event can take place.

Founded by Rhonda Brain, PTTR took off in 1998 and has since grown into a thriving community of more than 80 local groups helping more than 500,000 pre-school aged children get ready to learn at school.

“It’s all about parents making those connections with children because there’s generations of parents now that don’t sing to their babies and don’t do rhymes with them because their mothers didn’t know them,” Ms Weaver said.

“When you meet mothers with little babies and they don’t know Round and Round the Garden or This Little Piggy, it’s quite frightening because it’s all literacy-related.”