Read for the Record

Read for the Record

Last Thursday I took my niece and nephew to the Read for the Record event in Oakland. There were over 200 children reading the same book at the same time with a VIP. In this case the VIP was Pat Kernighan, the district supervisor.

Read for The Record is a campaign organized every year by the nonprofit organization Jump Start. Through this campaign this organization teaches children to read books so they will be prepared when they enter kindergarten and be successful in school. The purpose of the event is to break the record of children reading the same book at the same time all across the country.

Last year 150,000 children across the country participated in Read for the Record, all reading the same book. This year’s event was so successful that over 250,000 children participated.

This year the book was The Story of Ferdinand. This story was written many years ago and in many languages; it was famous.

This story is about a little bull, which was born in Spain. His name was Ferdinand. The little bull doesn’t like to play and to fight like the others. He only likes to sit quietly all the day and smell the flowers. He had a favorite spot under a big tree.
Ferdinand grew and grew until he was very big and strong. One day five men came to choose a bull to fight in Madrid. They wanted the biggest, fastest and roughest bull to fight in Madrid.
While the other bulls showed their abilities, strong and fierce to be picked, Ferdinand didn’t care and went to his favorite tree to sit down.
But this time Ferdinand sat on a bee, the bee stung him, so he became crazy. He started to jump, ran around puffing and snorting. The five men saw him and they thought he was the biggest and fiercest bull they were looking for.
They took Ferdinand to Madrid, and the day of the fight Ferdinand ran to the middle of the ring, everyone shouted and clapped because they thought he was going to fight fiercely and butt his horns. But Ferdinand saw the flower in the lady’s hair and he just sat down and smelled the flowers.