TIFTON — Tifton has held the title “The Reading Capital of the World” since 2000. Now the Tift County Foundation for Educational Excellence wants to take up the challenge of also becoming “The Read Aloud Capital of the World.”

“We’re going vocal,” said Mike Brumby, executive director of the foundation.

Frank Sayles, president of the foundation and a big advocate of reading, said there is a national initiative called “Read Aloud America,” based on the book, “The Read Aloud Handbook,” by Jim Trelease. According to the Read Aloud America website, their mission is “Through the fun of reading and being read to, Read Aloud America promotes literacy, bonds families and builds communities of lifetime readers.”

Brumby said it’s not that people don’t know about it. He said the Tift County School System has a lot of read aloud programs, including Head Start and Tiftarea Academy.

“People use it in lots of ways,” he said. “But, we think that we can maximize that and spread it and make it a real pride of the community and make a huge difference.”

Brumby said he, Sayles and the board realize how important that is. The Read Aloud Committee members are Sayles, Shaundra Clark, Tracy Monk, George McCarty, Wanda Veazey, Joy West and Terri Nalls.

They hope to make this a campaign called “The Reading Promise,” Brumby said.

He noted, “If you had every child read to aloud every day until they went off to college, we would have the smartest place in the universe.”

Sayles agreed and added, “Reading aloud helps the person reading and it helps the person listening, and you have young children who become mentors to their younger siblings sometimes when they’re reading to them.”

Some of those ideas include reading aloud to animals. Also, they plan to work with the Tifton Housing Authority, assisted living facilities, local library and others in the community to push this initiative.

Brumby says he met Bill Thurman of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who created “Read Aloud Chattanooga.” During a phone interview, Thurman said it’s important to read to kids. He said he met Trelease in 2002 to find out more about reading aloud. He said he asked him if he would help with their previous project, “Why Learn?,” which he became convinced that Read Aloud would be the culminating project for it.

“It became almost like the Declaration of Independence for me,” Thurman said.

He said a team of people was developed and the first public symbol they used for the initiative was vinyl rain gutters as bookshelves, where the covers of books are easily seen.

Sayles said they want to put a spotlight on reading aloud to let people know and encourage more of it. He said they’re kicking this initiative off immediately in Tifton.

Brumby said he has already spoken to local schools, Tiftarea Academy and Head Start about the initiative. He said they are all interested in jumping on board with the idea. He said after he and Clark spoke with Charles Spencer Elementary School, they’re now interested in having some of their students read to the kids at Head Start, which is across the street from the school.

To help kick Read Aloud off publicly, muralist Gale Hinton of Knoxville, Tennessee, visited Tifton this week to paint Read Aloud murals at Len Lastinger Primary School and Annie Belle Clark Primary School. The Gazette spoke to Hinton Thursday morning after she had already begun pointing the mural at Annie Belle Clark.

While painting a mural in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she said she met Thurman and learned about the Read Aloud program. She has now been painting Read Aloud murals for about 12 or 13 years, but she’s been painting murals for a total of 50 years.

According to her website, Hinton’s designs are elegant to whimsical. She has painted hundreds of one of a kind murals in homes, schools, hospitals, businesses and churches nationwide.

She said her normal work day is about 12-14 hours. She started painting the mural at Len Lastinger Tuesday morning about 7:15 a.m. She painted for 12 hours and then returned Wednesday and completed painting after another 12 hours. While at Len Lastinger Thursday, Hinton pointed out the different details in the mural, which greets staff, students and visitors on the wall when entering the school.

Students passing by that morning stopped and stared, noticing the various features such as ants, a rabbit, an owl, birds, kids and much more.

“Visuals are what capture you,” Hinton said, noting she also pulls from other people when painting her murals. She said most of her murals for Read Aloud include a tree house, which Thurman liked the idea when he first met her. Also, she always includes a special needs child in the mural. She said she has twin autistic grandsons.

Hinton said she likes to include quotes as well, which her favorite is “Smile, it’s contagious.”

Sayles says Read Aloud is something that the community can get involved in. He noted they’re looking at doing “little free libraries” in Tifton as well to help encourage reading. He said the little libraries look similar to bird/dog houses, where people can take a book out to read and put a book back in. He said they want to put them at specific places in the community and have people in charge of them.

Anyone with ideas about the Read Aloud initiative can contact Sayles at (229) 402-4416.