Staff Writer
MAPLETON – Though many of them won’t be able to legally vote for another 10 years, students at Mapleton Elementary School had the opportunity last week to cast their ballot for something other than president.
In a unique way of studying the election process, children were divided into three groups by grade levels. Each level had the choice of three book titles, and students were encouraged to campaign for the book they hoped would receive the most votes. Using the actual town voting booths, students voted last Monday for the book they wanted to receive free from the Scholastic Book Fair. The book titles that were the election winners will be purchased for each Mapleton Elementary student by the Mapleton Parents Organization (MPO).
“We wanted to do something with the election,” said Jennifer Player, school librarian and treasurer of the MPO, “but we thought that doing a real mock election with real candidates might be a little too much for the kids … especially trying to explain the issues. We wanted it to be more personal … more appropriate for them and we also wanted to encourage reading at the same time.
“We generally do a family event for the school after Christmas and we try to center it around reading, so we thought a fun way to do that might be if the kids could pick the books that we’ll use for our event in the winter through an election,” she said. “With the help of Mrs. [Gail] Gibson, our principal, I picked some books that were appropriate for each grade level that would be high interest as a family read aloud. Through the MPO, we’ll make sure that each child gets a copy of the winning book to read with their family probably by Christmas, and then in late-January we’ll have our family event.”
Students in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade got to choose between “Hooray for Fly Guy,” “Knuffle Bunny Too,” and “How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?” Children in grades two and three chose from “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,” “The Doll People,” and “Roxie and the Hooligans.” Fourth- and fifth-graders decided between “The Tale of Despereaux,” “The White Giraffe,” and “Leepike Ridge.”
Player said it was fun watching the students campaign for their favorite book.
“It was a good way to introduce voting and to say, ‘This is how your peers will try to influence you to vote for their candidate or not to vote for their candidate.’ By doing it this way,” she said, “we could talk to them about the process and make it more personal and less political.
“We told the students they needed to do their research and think about what’s important to them in a book … ‘Are you looking for adventure?’ or ‘Are you looking for interesting characters?’ and then look at the three choices and decide what’s the best choice for them and then try to bring other people over to their point of view. It was interesting to see how they handled that.”
Fifth-grader Alyssa Trombley was looking forward to casting her ballot later in the day.
“I think it’s kind of cool that we get to vote for books, and the winning book, we actually get to keep,” she said. “It’s like you get to have the president.
“I don’t really know which book I’m going to vote for,” said Trombley. “I’ll probably decide when it’s time to vote.”
Shaye McHatten, another fifth-grader, said the activity was fun because “it gets us into the experience of voting.”
“I think I’m going to vote for ‘The Tale of Despereaux,’” she said. “I like fairy tale books and that’s a fairy tale, so that’s going to be my vote.”
McHatten said she was able to draw some comparisons between the book and presidential elections.
“Kids have been putting up lots of posters and sometimes it gets out of control,” she said. “Some people are putting them on the principal’s door. With the presidential election, people are putting up posters everywhere to get people to vote, so they’re doing the same thing.”
Recognizing that it will be a while before they get to vote “for real,” fifth-grader Eden Martin said “it’s pretty cool that we get to vote now.”
“I’ll probably vote for either ‘The White Giraffe’ or ‘The Tale of Despereaux.’ We read the first paragraph of each book and ‘Leepike Ridge’ sounds pretty boring,” she said. “I like the idea of getting to vote.”
Second-grader Colton Harding was excited to use an authentic voting booth.
“I got to go in the booth and vote. That was neat. I voted for ‘The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,’” he said. “It’s about a glass bunny and he has a journey. That’s what I like about the book. I really love to read.”
According to fifth-grade teacher Gail Hamel, the students spent some class time learning about their three options.
“We either read a chapter or two from each of the books, and the kids got a chance to make posters for their books,” she said. “They also got together in groups and had discussions and offered reasons why they wanted to choose that book … trying to persuade others to come to their side of the voting.
“It’s a great way of mixing social studies and language arts with the voting process,” said Hamel, “and getting the kids and their families to read.”
Since the town of Mapleton votes at the elementary school, the voting booths were already there, and a few were brought up to the main lobby for the voting exercise.
The winning books were “Knuffle Bunny Too,” “Roxie and the Hooligans,” and “The White Giraffe.”
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
KELLY McHATTEN, right, co-chair of the Mapleton Parents Organization, collects ballots from pre-kindergartners at Mapleton Elementary School during last Monday’s voting exercise in which students voted for the book they wanted to receive free from the Scholastic Book Fair. The event was a unique and fun way to study the election process.
