City Hall’s Story Room

Redecorating a small room in the library cost half a million dollars, and that’s no joke. According to city hall’s Outlook Magazine, the garish decorations in the Storytime Room are the centerpiece of “reading comprehension and a love for reading.”

City hall’s fluff writers should stick with what they know – bureaucracy. When they venture into such subjects as parenting and education, they embarrass themselves.

A blog reader who reacted to the article in Outlook Magazine is a retired reading teacher. She said, “The success of telling a story is with the storyteller, not the room. If the visual environment doesn’t relate to the story, it’s more a distraction than anything else. I found the quotes in Outlook Magazine to be contrived. A ‘stimulating surrounding’ does not ‘spark the children’s interest in reading.’ In the article, I saw no justification for spending a fortune to redecorate a room.”

The cover picture of activity in the Storytime Room is revealing. More than a third of the children in the room aren’t looking in the right direction. The story reader holds up a book that’s difficult to see from the back row. Rows of crates for seating don’t make sense, as the photo demonstrates. The design and paintings are amateurish and flat.

The $500,000 room remodel was a wasteful project with an unaesthetic result. The room decoration doesn’t stimulate interest in reading any more than the pillars on Crown Valley stimulate interest in art.