“Fergus, we already found you!” is the first line of the children’s book ‘Find Fergus’ by Mike Boldt.
And it was the first book ‘Miss Denise’ Bean, Youth Services Librarian from the Iowa Department for the Blind, read to the children and adults in attendance at Story Time held at the Rowan Public Library on Wednesday afternoon, April 20.
The one-hour event is one of a dozen or more being held around Iowa. Rowan Librarian Steve Sutter said, “I saw the invitation via email and applied to be one of the towns chosen. We are fortunate to have Denise in our midst.”
Besides reading stories for the event, Bean wanted to make people, more aware of blindness and how blind people are ‘just like everyone else, they just do some things differently’. She demonstrated the Braille system and its six dots’ system and spent some time helping children spell out their names on Braille bookmarks.
“Louis Braille was a sighted child,” she told the children, “But an accident which punctured one eye turned into an infection that went to his other eye causing his blindness.” He then spent the rest of his life working on the Braille system of writing and reading.
Bean was promoting not only reading materials for blind people, but resources in audio and large print, which the state has available. (Check out blind.iowa.gov). Sutter said the summer reading program has its theme ‘Read Beyond the Beaten Path’ and invited Been to come back sometime this summer. “I would love to come back sometime during the summer months,” she said.
