AL National ACTION! Week:  ALSTL Books From Friends (BFF) Celebrates Children's Literacy with a Virtual Book Festival in a Box & Character Parade

BFF urban league costume characters at Feb 23 2021 parade 2Assistance League of St. Louis Member volunteers have designed a unique Virtual Book Festival in a Box for two Urban League Head Start Programs and teachers. Inside the Box is a magical flash drive containing a video Puppet Show written and performed by the volunteers, plus 14 story time vignettes, and suggestions for classroom activities. The teachers were also given books corresponding to all the vignettes.

urban league costume characterOn Tuesday, Feb. 23 at the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis' MLK Head Start Center and again on Thursday, Feb. 25, at the Urban League Magnolia Head Start/Early Head Start Center, preschoolers watched the Puppet Show and book reading on the flash drive. Then, in the school gyms, Assistance League members brought the stories alive in a costume parade dressed as book characters including Pete the Cat, Thing One and Thing Two, and the Cat in the Hat. After the parade, each child received two new age-appropriate books to take home.

Dr Suess characters at urban league MLK event In addition to the Virtual Book Festivals, Assistance League is participating in an Urban League drive-through on Feb. 27 to continue National Assistance League ACTION! Week's focus on literacy. This marks the third time ALSTL has partnered with Urban League in a drive-through and donated a total of 10,000 books. St. Louis area Girl Scouts collected and donated 3,000 of these age-appropriate, gently used and new books to ALSTL.

The creative and innovative volunteer members of Assistance League of St. Louis prove once again how to "think outside the box" with a Book Festival inside and outside the box!