Baxter’s Corner, a locally founded and owned business that uses creativity and storytelling to affect positive behavioral choices, has partnered with Family Scholar House (FSH) to provide content and coordination for a 6-week Family Storytime camp to be held at the FSH Bradley Street Campus.
FSH provides for young and under-supported parents by giving them a stable home and community, as well as support for their children, while they go back to school.
Baxter’s Corner books are designed to initiate discussions between children and adults that help children develop critical thinking and essential social skills as they begin to understand that their choices have consequences. Each book features the company’s signature Go Beyond section, which provides additional ideas for reinforcing the story, making connections to real life situations, and motivating the child to be his or her best self.
Each book introduces characters, who are part of the Baxter’s Corner community, and highlights a specific behavioral theme such as respect, anti-bullying, compassion, perseverance and overcoming obstacles. The books focus on good choices to make in a certain situation and use the endearing animal characters to make the point. The goal is to provide both young readers, and the caregivers who may be reading to the child, strong examples of how to best approach some of the struggles that children face in today’s world, such as having a parent in “timeout” as Ally the alligator does in Ally Alone.
Other Baxter’s Corner titles in the series are Ellema Sneezes, Oakley in Knots, Sideways Fred, What a Tree It Will Be! and Gerome Sticks His Neck Out, which earned the prestigious Mom’s Choice Award® and was a Finalist for the Book of Excellence Award.
The weekly one-hour program will be facilitated by both Baxter’s Corner and FSH staff and volunteers and will consist of a group reading and discussion time with adults and children together, followed by separate activity and discussion sessions for adults and children. Up to 15 families with children ages 4 to 8 years of age are expected to participate.
Said FSH Program Director Kristie Adams, “We are delighted to work with community partners such as Baxter’s Corner to provide activities such as the Family Storytime camp that help give single parents the support they need to pursue their own higher education. It is our goal that through education and social support, we can effectively help them break the cycle of poverty for their children and future generations.”
Baxter’s Corner author (Chief Pencil), Linda Villwock Baker, and illustrator (Chief Crayon), Mary Ellen Stottmann, have reached out to community partners to make the books more readily and economically available. For instance, Ally Alone has been used as part of the Bridge to Success Family Day at Roederer Correctional Complex in Buckner, Kentucky and Gerome Sticks His Neck Out has been distributed to graduates of the Urban Leadership Alliance Seminar(ULAS), part of the Urban Leagues’ efforts to keep young African American men on a constructive path to high-level employment.
According to Stottmann, who is also the Managing Partner of Baxter’s Corner, “Early childhood is a critical time of development. For that reason, we would like to see every child in Kentucky under the age of five have access to these stories as well as our growing library of values-based books. We want children to grow up learning how to make healthy social and behavioral choices,” she said.
About Baxter’s Corner®
Baxter’s Corner is a Louisville-based company whose mission is to use creativity and storytelling to affect behavior choices through open discussion between children and adults about values and ethical topics that challenge today’s society, because Building Character is Child’s PlayTM. For more information, go to www.baxterscorner.com.
About Family Scholar House
The Family Scholar House mission is to end the cycle of poverty and transform the community by empowering families and youth to succeed in education and achieve life-long self-sufficiency.