Ebbert also recently set up Where books come alive, a family literacy program that introduced literature to illiterate parents. The program included nine after-school sessions in which students and their parents came to hear YA storytellers read books from such genres as folk tales, biographies and western cowboy tales. It generated a tremendous amount of interest in reading, Ebbert says. The parents became excited just like the kids in elementary school. Students in the second through fourth grades met twice per week for an hour and a half with an artist who taught them about shadow puppets.
Students read books about shadow puppets and learned through trial and error how to make their own.
It was the most exciting thing I have ever watched, Ebbert says. The students spent 18 weeks developing creativity and abstract thinking. At first, some students had no idea what a shadow puppet was. They made all these intricately designed figures, and when they put them in front of the light nothing showed up. They soon realized they needed to make three-dimensional expressions.