Lafayette County library joins Roll & Read event for local families

Families with children ages 0-8 found free books, hands-on reading stations and therapy pig Butterbean at Avent Park as the Lafayette County & Oxford Public Library joined LOU Reads for the third annual Roll & Read event.

The event centered on a larger local literacy goal: LOU Reads says its mission is to ensure children in the Lafayette-Oxford-University community read proficiently by the end of third grade. That work is aimed at the years before children ever reach a classroom reading benchmark, with the coalition focusing on school readiness, attendance, out-of-school time opportunities and targeted efforts to promote grade-level reading.

This year’s Roll & Read was built around Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr., with interactive stations designed to bring the book to life for young children and their families. Each family in attendance received a free book to take home, giving parents another reading tool to use after the park event ended.

The coalition’s broader strategy reaches beyond one afternoon in Oxford. LOU Reads joined the national Campaign for Grade Level Reading in 2015, making the LOU community only the second Mississippi community to sign on at that time, according to United Way of Oxford-Lafayette County. The effort has kept attention on whether children enter school ready to learn, attend consistently and spend enough time in literacy-rich activities outside regular class hours.

The library’s participation also underscored its role as a local access point for families. The Lafayette County & Oxford Public Library is a joint venture of the Lafayette County Board of Supervisors and the Oxford Board of Aldermen, funded by both the county and city. It operates as a branch of First Regional Library, which serves DeSoto, Lafayette, Panola, Tate and Tunica counties, and eligible residents can get a free library card for use at any of its 14 branches.

That public access has deep roots in Oxford. The library opened in an upper room of City Hall in 1930, moved to Madison Avenue in 1964 in what was then noted as Oxford’s first integrated building, and settled into its current 16,300-square-foot home at 401 Bramlett Blvd. in March 1977. That building later gained a 10,000-square-foot addition with an auditorium and two extra meeting rooms, giving the library more space for the kind of family programming LOU Reads used to connect early literacy with everyday life.