Read to Lead, the Dade County Public Library's popular annual event in which local leaders read to children, was this Saturday. Couldn't make it? Then accompany The Planet on its eccentric ellipse around the libe and the town square with this pleasin' Planet pictorial!
First: Here are some local honchos in the reading lineup. At bat--at book?--is Temperance Shults, director of special programs for Dade Schools. Waiting their turns are Trenton Police Chief Christy Smith and Mayor Alex Case.
The leaders read in the library's Story Time room, done up by the library staff as a barn in honor of this year's theme book, Charlotte's Web. Library staffers and volunteers dressed as farmhands, as shown at right by the library's ridiculously picturesque Nicole Waters.
Local law enforcement was represented not just by Trenton's pulchritudinous Police Chief Christy Smith
(in blues) but by elected Police Commissioner Sandra Gray and several other city officers in a Trenton Police Department booth (left).
The county was not to be outdone. A Dade County Sheriff's Office information booth was manned (and womanned) by Sheriff Ray Cross and Mrs. Sheriff, Cindy Cross (below, right), not very convincingly costumed as a pink porker). Some pig, Cindy!
Read to Lead gets bigger every year, with library manager Marshana Sharp specifying every attraction must be free of charge. This year it was so well-attended as to be positively claustrophobic.
Things got really tight inside when the Davis Chorus (above) performed from behind, and on top of, the library's circulation desk.
Luckily, the weekend's rains held off long enough to allow the crowds to spill outside onto the Trenton town square, where pony rides and a petting zoo were featured. At left, Tala Bien is lifted from her steed by mother Katie. Below, children and parents get up close and personal with farm animals at a petting zoo.
As is to be expected at a farm-themed do like this one, Dade 4-H was also highly visible, in the form of a pig bean-toss (left) managed by coordinator Alison Henderson (center) and students Ivy and Basil Nakhleh.
At right, County Boss Ted Rumley, one of the day's readers,
chats with guests after his own turn behind the book.
Below, Jane Dixon sits sidesaddle at the Trenton/Dade Optimist Club display.
Ms. Dixon specified she was not there to campaign, but as it happens she is running for the District 1 Dade County Commission seat being vacated this year by Mitchell Smith.
The retired school administrator vamped it up a little for The Planet's camera, explaining she'd read that when male candidates start appearing spiffed up in suits and ties, it's time for female candidates to flash a little cleavage. "I told Ted, you guys better watch out," said Ms. Dixon.
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