Planting the seed: How one small grant helped a youth reading program to grow in Cambria County

By Karen Price

Back in 2006, librarian Barb Zaborowski received a seed grant from PA Humanities (then Pennsylvania Humanities Council) to help expand the One Book, One Community program at Pennsylvania Highlands Community College in Cambria County.

The program started as an adult offering, but Zaborowski saw the opportunity to engage students in middle school, an age at which studies have shown that interest in reading drops off. The $1,000 in funding from PA Humanities helped to get the initiative for young people up and running, and organizers were thrilled to have six school districts and 575 students participate that first year. 

Today, the program is not only still going but also wildly successful, with every single public school district in Cambria County taking part. Registration fills in days, Zaborowski said, and this year they’re expecting 1,337 students. To date, they’ve had more than 20,000 students participate. The program’s success is part of PA Humanities’ legacy of commitment to libraries and education, which continues today with programs such as Teen Reading Lounge and Youth-Led Humanities, and a testament to the impact of funding for the humanities.

“This would have never happened if, in those early years, (we hadn’t gotten the PA Humanities grant),” Zaborowski said. “That’s the key. People want to back a winner and that’s why those early grants from PA Humanities were so important, because we were able to demonstrate success and able to demonstrate the model that worked.”

Each book is tied to Pennsylvania history. Zaborowski sends copies to teachers in the fall when registration opens, and they read the book in their classes during the school year. The culminating program is held in May, and Zaborowski’s rule when selecting books is that the author must come speak to the students.

“Kids love to talk to the author,” she said. 

But what truly makes the program so special is the amount of creativity and effort the organizers put into bringing the stories to life for the students through hands-on activities and demonstrations. 

Students have read books about coal mining, canals, the Civil War, the Underground Railroad, World War I, the Cuban Revolution, Benjamin Franklin, and westward expansion, to name just a few. The first year’s book was “The Breaker Boys” by Pat Hughes, about the son of a wealthy Pennsylvania coal mine operator who befriends the local boys who work for his father. The early years of the event were held in partnership with the National Park Service at Allegheny Portage National Historic Site, and park rangers brought mules from the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal site to demonstrate the role the animals played in industry at that time. Rangers led activities that included showing the tools used in mining, and someone came to teach the students Polish dances because the mine workers in the book were Polish immigrants. 

The program stayed at Allegheny Portage National Historic Site for three years – during which time organizers received a total of three PA Humanities grants – before interest grew so much that they had to expand to multiple days and find a new home.

The event is now held at Pennsylvania Highlands Community College over three days and is funded almost entirely by staff contributions as well as donations from community organizations including Rotary clubs. 

Over the years the students have seen covered wagons and sat in hot air balloons. They’ve learned to use a compass, sign language and a decoder to read secret messages. Presenters in period costumes have demonstrated everything from cooking to doctoring in war time to life in the trenches. They’ve “heard from” historic figures including Sacajawea, and even got to pet big fluffy Newfoundland dogs after learning about how one such animal aided Lewis & Clark on their journeys. 

This year, the book is “Tooth and Claw: The Dinosaur Wars,” by Deborah Noyes, about the race between two scientists in the 1800s to discover more fossils and uncover more information about the giants that once roamed the earth. 

Zaborowski has been busy in her basement making cement and plaster of paris molds so the students can “excavate” their own fossils. She had students at the local vocational school use tiny balsa wood models to create giant wooden dinosaur puzzles that the students will take apart and put back together. The kids will also be doing dinosaur identification, as well as learning about paleobotany and looking at plants from the age of dinosaurs that are still alive today. They have a real paleontologist coming, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is bringing fossils the students will actually get to touch and handle. They’re also transforming the library into a jungle, filled with giant dinosaurs on loan from a local nursery. 

“There are teachers who’ve been coming for 18 years,” Zaborowski said. “I have schools that have never missed. I have students here now who went through this and they all remember something – one of the activities or the book – about their trip here. And then they volunteer to be group leaders and take the younger kids around. It’s a lot of fun.”