Published: November 24, 2009 09:18 pm      

Easy listening

Teacher gets into character to read

DANVILLE — A special reader transported East Park Elementary School kindergarteners and first-graders back to the Middle Ages on Tuesday as they listened to a story.

Deborah Kelly, a fifth-grade MATS teacher, played a character she named Lady Furnival while reading the story “Saint George and the Dragon.”

The students sat entranced as they watched Kelly read the classic tale. She wore a costume she designed herself, which depicted the styles of medieval royal courts. She wore a “dagger” on her sash, which she told her listeners she only takes out at mealtimes for the purpose of cutting meat.

Several kids wanted to know if it was real. Others had questions about her dragon that guards her castle.

“How does my dragon get around? He flies,” she said in response to one inquiry.

Kelly did some research in preparation for her reading.

She tried to stay true to the 1200s, the period that is represented in Knights of the Roundtable.

The students asked her about the food she ate and the questions eventually led to talk of a refrigerator, which she said she’d never heard of.

“We just have the deep pit in the ground,” she explained, where the temperature is cool enough to preserve foods.

She told the students only the highest levels of society, such as royalty, routinely ate meat. Much of it is provided by the people who worked for her family, she said.

Other kids wanted to know whether her “jewels” were real. Kelly’s costume was complete with jewelry. She told the studentts that they were real and were given to her by her father.

The kids’ eagerness to ask so many questions shows the success of one of the goals of the school’s celebrity reader program — to make students more engaged with reading.

East Park Assistant Principal Brandie Fellers said the school conducts a reading session about every week. The readings are held so that each grade level gets its own age-appropriate reading, she added. The readings make books more accessible and remind students of the importance of reading.

Anyone who would like to be a celebrity reader should call the school at 444-3200.

Past readers have included former District 118 Superintendent David Fields, Danville Area Community College President Alice Jacobs and others in the community.

Costumes aren’t required.