Mark Daniels Explains READasaurus and His Inspiration

Mark Daniel is the owner and founder of “The Treasure of the READasaurus!” reading program, which shares the joy of literature with small children. His program combines magic tricks, reading, puppetry and book talking to keep kids captivated and teach them about literature and its importance.

WFDD Radio Camper Emmy Doom has more.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Mark Daniel and I sat down in the lobby of the Davie county YMCA to discuss his program and what it does for children.

I've got the neatest job and it's kind of unusual. I ‘m a magical storyteller, and that encompasses actually kind of a lot of things. Not only storytelling, but I'm a book talker, which is a librarian's term. Librarians take a book and give kind of an oral book report and sometimes they have some visual aids to go with it. I'm a storyteller, book talker, puppeteer, and a magician. Roll all of that together and it makes for so much fun and a wonderful way to share and celebrate great children's books.

Mark also talked about his childhood librarian, and how she inspired him to work with children.

Just down the street from the Y is the Davie county library, and as a boy, I lived on Park Avenue which was right around the corner from the library. I would ride my book up constantly to the library, I was always there I got to know the children's librarian, Olivia Husk, at the time. She took a real interest in me. She said, “Well Mark, what kinds of books do you like to read?” And I said, “Ms. Husk, I love to read books on magic tricks.” She said “Really?!” She said “Follow me!” She took me over to the children's department and she showed me an entire shelf of books on magic tricks and I read them all. Many many times.

Mark has been teaching the READasaurus program for 29 years. He travels all over the Eastern United States with his work. He loves teaching children, and hopes to continue his program well into the future.

For WFDD Radio Camp, this is Emmy Doom.