ST. PETERSBURG - The children sat cross-legged on a big blue alphabet rug, munching on animal crackers and sipping pink punch.
Mayor Rick Baker brought his guitar. St. Petersburg College president Carl Kuttler came with a basketful of toy Donald Ducks. Each child left with a new storybook.
More than two dozen people gathered at St. Petersburg College's Midtown campus Monday evening to listen to a story about dinosaurs.
This week's story hour was the first of a weekly summer series that will bring in community volunteers to read to children.
Story Time at Midtown is sponsored by St. Petersburg College and hosted at the Housing Authority's Center for Achievement, 1048 22nd St. S. It will be held through July on Mondays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
"I'm going to introduce a really special friend to you," SPC instructor Anne Sullivan told the roomful of 20 children on Monday. "He's the mayor of our city."
Dinosaur picture book in hand, Baker sidestepped a yellow rocking chair to sit on the floor with his young audience.
Cartoon tyrannosaurus and stegosaurus covered the pages of Baker's oversized storybook, If the Dinosaurs Came Back by Bernard Most. It's the story of a young boy who imagines all the jobs dinosaurs could do if they came back to life.
"This has become my favorite book to read," the mayor said. "It has a good theme to it."
Plus, he said, he likes the help he gets from the audience.
"Do you want to try - can you read this?" Baker asked a 5-year-old boy.
Other children waved their arms frantically to volunteer to read from the book.
"We're excited about this," said Evelyn Finklea, the program's creator. Finklea is also director for SPC's social and behavior sciences and communications.
"It's the whole literacy concern," she said. "Some children are never read to and we're trying to be a model."
Sullivan said she hopes the series will show parents you don't have to be a teacher to help a child learn to read. The story times are free and open to the public, best suited for elementary-aged children and their parents.
Baker said the program is an important part of the city's collaboration with Kuttler and SPC to encourage community involvement in Midtown.
"We came for the books. We came for the reading," said Hildegarde Shirley, a 20-year writing instructor at SPC Gibbs. She brought her 5-year-old granddaughter, Lillian Shirley. "We do all these functions," the instructor said.
"I liked the book," Lillian said. "It helps me by sounding it out."
But even more than dinosaurs, Lillian enjoyed Kuttler's Donald Duck impression. "It was funny," she said with a smile.
Lillian and others each received a new storybook, purchased through a $700,000 literacy grant from SPC and Directions for Mental Health Inc.
"I just love reading," said 10-year-old Joshua Baxter, gripping his new copy of A Pocket for Corduroy. "We have this book at school."
The next story time will be July 12. Future guest readers include SPC faculty, Deputy Mayor Goliath Davis and St. Petersburg NAACP president Darryl Rouson.
Other story hours in Midtown are held throughout the summer on Friday mornings beginning at 9:30 at James Weldon Johnson Branch Library, 1059 18th Ave. S.
