Read Across America Day Author Howard Frank Mosher taking questions from Mascoma Students

Read Across America Day celebration with author Howard Frank Mosher grows into a multimedia experience with Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven

This March 2nd, Read Across America Day will have a special significance for students at Mascoma Valley Regional High School. All Mascoma students will be spending the day with award winning author Howard Frank Mosher studying several of his works. He will share one of his short stories, "High Water," with the freshmen, sophomores and juniors. Mosher's book A Stranger in the Kingdom is one of the books studied as part of the senior English curriculum. He will be presenting a slide show to seniors demonstrating how an incident in his Northeast Kingdom neighborhood became the inspiration for this book.

Mascoma's reading teacher Linda Ladd and librarian Mary Swainbank organized the program. The enthusiasm of Linda Ladd and Mary Swainbank must have been contagious. Before long, the program was expanded to further explore Mosher's works with Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven. Craven has made films of several of Mosher's stories: "Where the Rivers Flow North," starring Rip Torn, and "A Stranger in the Kingdom," starring Martin Sheen. On March 16th, Jay Craven will come to Mascoma Valley Regional High School to cast a different light on sharing Howard Frank Mosher's stories. He will be working with different classes throughout the day.

With the idea for this Read Across America program in mind, Linda Ladd and Mary Swainbank approached Mascoma's Experiencing the Arts director Christopher Morse with the proposal. "I was thrilled to be able to sponsor the program," said Morse. "Experiencing the Arts has recently won funding to explore the cross-curricular and broader community impact of the Arts. Providing this experience for all Mascoma students in conjunction with the national Read Across America program (and initiated through the interest of other faculty) is exactly the type of experience I would have hoped to sponsor." Experiencing the Arts has won funding from the NH Council on the Arts Artlinks program, The Byrne Foundation, and The Mascoma Savings Bank Foundation. The program is an experiential Arts program covering Theater, Media Arts, Visual Arts, Dance, Music, and Writing/Poetry for more information about the program is on their web site at http://www.experiencingthearts.com.

Principal Patrick Andrew said that Howard Frank Mosher's stories in many ways illuminate the texture of rural life that is familiar to residents of the five towns served by Mascoma: Canaan, Dorchester, Enfield, Grafton, and Orange. He was pleased and impressed that artists of this caliber would be willing to come share their experiences with students of Mascoma. At the faculty meeting when these programs were announced, Principal Andrew gave much credit to the dedicated efforts of his faculty in making these types of experiences possible for the Mascoma students.