The McComb School District is holding Hilda Casin Reading Day Friday with a celebration in the center court of Uptown McComb mall on Veterans Boulevard.
The event at 11:30 a.m. will honor Casin’s 93rd birthday and use the legacy of the longtime elementary teacher and district administrator — as well as founder of the Black History Gallery — to promote reading by students and the public.
“I am deeply honored that they looked around and found an old teacher who valued reading and know what it means,” Casin said Wednesday. “The community needs readers. A nation is only as strong as its readers.
“We need to focus on reading. Calling words is not enough. Reading is about thinking and getting information.”
Casin many parents could help their children more in the first four to five years of life, before children go to school.
“Reading starts at home,” she said. “Then the school picks up the torch, and children learn and sing their ABC’s. Once they can put letters to gether to make words, they can form opinions and discuss what they’ve read, and what kind of sense it makes to them.”
Casin said she would take trips in her mind while reading as a child herself, going to a dried-out hog pen and climbing a chinaberry tree. She remembers specifically taking “The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore” to her favorite branch.
“What a pleasure it was,” she said. “Reading can help children think, ‘where can I go?’ They realize there are other places besides where they are.”
Reading is the foundation of all the decisions we make, and critical to making good decisions. starting with the story of Chicken Little and the other birds who encounter Foxy Loxy on their way to tell the king that the sky is falling. Foxy Loxy tells the frightened birds that the king is in his den.
“They need to think, what is the king doing in Foxy Loxy’s den?” Casin said. “This is the problem when someone offers children drugs, and they’re silly enough to take them. Their lives are messed up because they’re not able to think things through.”
She said the state’s third-grade gate, a test which helps determine whether students are promoted to the fourth grade, is important because it shows whether students are prepared for more advanced information.
“If they can’t put letters together to make words, how are they going to deal with other subjects?” she asked. “Parents need to work with schools help their children learn and focus on being their best. If they can read, they can get a good job. They’re not going to make a living by stealing or selling drugs.”
Friday’s celebration will highlight Casin’s love for reading, McComb School District Federal Programs Director Betty Wilson-McSwain said.
“Everyone, scholars and adults, will be encouraged to develop the habit of reading for the joy of reading and for information,” she said.
The program will feature presentations from students, and retired principal Linda Young and Casin’s former student, the Rev. Benton Thompson, will speak.
The school district is urging members of the community to read and share what they are reading.
School officials also suggest donating books to the Hilda L. Casin Library at the Boys and Girls Club of Southwest Mississippi, and donating $93 to the Black History Gallery.
