Ohio's first lady Fran DeWine reads to St. Peter's pupils
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Ohio's first lady Fran DeWine stopped at St. Peter's Montessori School on West First Street Wednesday afternoon to promote Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.
She read, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle, to about two dozen preschool and first graders, getting a lot of audience participation, which is something she likes. The children sat on the carpet and excitedly joined in as DeWine talked about the hungry caterpillar who ate a lot of food.
Several children said "he's going to have a stomach ache."
Afterward, DeWine, the wife of Gov. Mike DeWine, said the book was published about 50 years ago and is a classic among children.
"I love to read to kids," she said of her own children. "It's one of my favorite books to read to kids because they can kind of participate and help me read it."
The mother of eight children and 26 grandchildren, she reads a lot of books to her grandchildren. Her grandchildren range in age from 20 months old — cousins, born eight days apart — to her oldest grandchild who will be 29 at the end of the month.
Parton launched Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in 1995 by sending free books to children in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she was born and raised. She started the program to honor her father, Robert “Lee” Parton, who died in 2000.
“Daddy didn’t get a chance to read and write and he was always kind of embarrassed by that,” Parton said in August when she visited Ohio to promote the free children's book program, according to an article in The Columbus Dispatch. “I just always felt my heart was always heavy that my Daddy felt like there was something he couldn’t do, because we thought he could do anything.”
DeWine said she is crisscrossing the state and getting kids signed up for the free books.
Children can receive a book every month in the U.S. mail from the time they are born until they turn 5.
How to sign up for free books
Children can be enrolled by going to ohioimaginationlibrary.org/enroll. The list of books is available at imaginationlibrary.com/usa/book-list.
DeWine's stops also included a question and answer session at St. Peter's High School with a classroom of students, touring Richland Pregnancy Services to learn about the services they offer and their plans for the future. And she met with local officials at the Reindeer Grill.
lwhitmir@gannett.com
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Twitter: @LWhitmir
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Fran DeWine promotes literacy and Dolly Parton's Imagination Library
