Books | Culture & Community | Education & Youth | LEAP | Arts & Culture | New Haven Green | Literacy
Tracey Massey and Michael Goubourn. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Nine-year-old Michael Goubourn studied the image before him, taking in every detail. On the open page, a boy named Brian sat by himself in the cafeteria, eyes turned toward several kids his age. Beside him, everything was in bright color: the other kids’ t-shirts and lunchboxes, the brown paper bags and bowls of food, the ponytails and close-cropped haircuts dotting the room.
But Brian was in grayscale, pale as a ghost.
“How is he looking like that?” Michael asked. Around him, snippets of Born On The Water and How Do You Spell Unfair? drifted through the air, as dozens of books opened to their first pages. Dragonflies, their wings diaphanous and vibrating, dipped down toward the grass. Michael, not easily distracted, kept on looking at the page.
Michael is a student at Worthington Hooker School, where he will start the fifth grade next month. Brian is a fictional character in Trudy Ludwig’s The Invisible Boy, a children’s book about small acts of kindness published in 2013. Friday morning, they came together for Leadership, Education, & Athletics in Partnership’s (LEAP) 23rd annual Read-In on the New Haven Green.
Top: LEAP Executive Director Henry Fernandez. Bottom: Reader Fallon Thomas, who is a member of New Haven Works.
The event, which turns the Green into a cacophonous sea of blue and orange-shirted bibliophiles, has become a joyful celebration of literacy, in which LEAP’s campers meet dozens of people from across the city and spend the morning soaking up stories. This summer, that included the 940 LEAPers who are learning across eight citywide sites, from Dwight/Kensington to Dixwell to Quinnipiac Meadows.
“This is me giving back to my community,” said volunteer reader and artist Tracey Massey, who credits a “big sister” with turning her on to the magic of reading when she was a kid growing up in New Haven. “When I became a mom, I built a library for my children. I knew how important it was for them to read. I was these little kids once.”
As LEAPers fanned out across the Green, Massey settled into a sunny spot, spreading out a bolt of shiny, textured taupe fabric for them to sit on. Three years into doing the read-in, she said, she particularly likes working with young boys, who are just on the cusp of adolescence.
Friday, she paired up with a group of rising fifth graders from Dixwell, who are normally based out of King-Robinson Inter-District Magnet School.
As she pulled out The Invisible Boy, she greeted the group, listening for a few quiet hellos in return. In front of her, Michael looked carefully at the first illustration, in which a small boy—or rather, the ghost-like impression of a boy—followed a schoolteacher through the hall. Behind him, nine classmates trailed in brilliant color, one reaching her small hand to the sky as she let out a scream.
“Can you see Brian, the invisible boy?” Massey asked, reading from the book. To her right, 10-year-old Jovon Hammi leaned in to get a closer look. “Even Mrs. Carlotti has trouble noticing him in her classroom. She’s too busy dealing with Nathan and Sophie.”
Massey turned the page, noting how much space some of the other students seemed to be taking up. There was Nathan, his decibel-shattering voice slicing through the classroom. There was Sophie, who whined her way through entirely too much of class. There were his peers, who seemed to miss him every time they picked a team or looked for a lunch table or had a birthday party.
Massey turned the page, and Brian was sitting alone, a smile on his face as he began to draw. Designs bloomed in every direction: reptilian creatures scaling apartment buildings, aliens ready to duke it out in outer space, scowl-faced pirates and a Superman look alike, “with the power to make friends wherever they go.” She turned the page again, and the teacher was introducing a new student named Justin, who seemed just as quiet and unsure as Brian was.
Top: NHPS Superintendent Dr. Madeline Negrón. Bottom: LEAPers get hyped up for the event.
“How many of you had a situation like that?” Massey asked, looking up from the book. “You had a new kid come into class and you were trying to figure out whether they were cool or not?”
“Me!” Jovon said. “That happened at my school.”
Massey grew serious. On the page, kids were laughing at Justin because he had brought beef bulghoki, a Korean dish bathed in the salty-sweet of soy, rice wine, sesame and garlic, to lunch. Brian sat alone at a table nearby, wondering if being teased was worse than being invisible. Massey pointed out both boys, one staring into his bowl of food as the other looked ready to cry.
“Some people look at you and it makes you feel like you’re not being seen,” she said, noting how ashen Brian appeared. She took a moment to look over the group, searching for a flicker of recognition, or an impromptu comment. When none came, she turned back to the page.
Back in the world of the book, the teasing hadn’t sat right with Brian. He slipped a note into Justin’s locker, offering a kinder take on the bulghoki.
“He’s, um—” Michael pointed at something and trailed off momentarily. On the page, Brian’s sleeves had turned green. He had little red circles on his cheeks and a shock of yellow hair
“Now that they’re noticing him, he’s turning back to color!” he finished. Massey nodded approvingly, a smile spreading across her face.
Darcus Henry hypes LEAPers up before the Read-In begins.
And he was. As Brian and Justin became friends, his world shifted from black and white into shades of orange, green, and blue. LEAPers, forgetting themselves for a moment, gave into the sheer delight of the scene, with wide, clear eyes and just-slightly goofy smiles. One was so excited that he later gave Massey a little squeeze.
“The new kid, you know, just made friends with Brian!” Massey exclaimed. “How awesome is that? Any time there’s a new kid at school, we want to be polite to them—”
“Make them feel welcome!” Michael chimed in. Massey nodded again in return.
Jovon, who had been fairly quiet, said the book resonated with him. Two years ago, a new student started at Booker T. Washington Academy, where he goes to school and will be a fifth grader in the fall. At first, “he was always mean to me,” Jovon remembered. He made a choice to keep responding with kindness.
“I gave him stuff, I would say kind words to him,” Jovon remembered. Now, the two are close friends—as are their moms. It’s taught Jovon that beneath a cruel remark or school bully, there may be a person who is just a little insecure in a new situation.
Top: Jhyonne Sutton-Stevenson, showing off one of James Patterson's Ali Cross graphic novels that he picked up at a book fair Thursday. Bottom: Rising seventh grader Naomi Johnson, who played Annie in Wexler-Grant School's final musical last year.
That message echoed for Jhyonne Sutton-Stevenson, a rising fifth grader at Davis Academy for Arts and Design Innovation Magnet School. When Massey began to read, he said, the book transported him back to his time at Barack Obama University Magnet School, where he made friends with a new student who had a speech impediment.
Just like Brian and Justin, he said, they became close after Jhyonne saw him getting teased, and told other kids to stop. Years later, they still play video games together.
“Everybody was being so mean to him and, I like, I had said, ‘That’s not cool at all!’” he recalled. “If you had a disability, you wouldn’t want someone to talk about you! You don’t know what someone’s going through.”
Massey, listening as she contemplated a second book, soaked it all in. During her childhood in New Haven—"it was a different New Haven,” she said—a student from Yale who volunteered for Big Brothers/Big Sisters took Massey under her wing. Together, the two spent hours reading books, visiting Yale’s sprawling campus, and going to lunch spots like the old Duffy’s Tavern.
She still remembers getting her first novel for Christmas, and realizing that reading could unlock whole new worlds. So for her birthday a few years ago, she vowed to start volunteering as a way to give back. She hasn’t stopped since.
“Next year I’m gonna see you guys again!” she said before the group headed across the Green to pick up lunch. “Continue to be kind. Continue to make lots of friends. And stay smart!”
Dixwell Site Director Darcus Henry, who first enrolled in LEAP when he was six years old, said he was thrilled to see the event continue to grow, particularly as New Haven continues to navigate its way through a literacy crisis. Two decades ago, LEAP was the first place that Henry fell in love with books, from the Captain Underpants series to Diary Of A Wimpy Kid.
Like Massey, he’s also trying to give back to his community through his work. From the time he was six to the time he was 13, Henry dedicated himself to LEAP, falling in love with every aspect of the program. Then he returned as a counselor in high school, and has stayed on and off in the years since.
He loves that the program still follows D.E.A.R.—Drop Everything and Read—which helped turn him into a bookworm.
“LEAP is love, LEAP is life, LEAP is what made me who I am today,” he said. Earlier that morning, he had lived that mission, hyping students up before they went off to read in different corners of the Green. “Knowledge is power! This is the only time when we get to see every kid at LEAP.”