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| My new route. Image courtesy of Google My Maps. |
I'm going to stick to the original plan up to Iowa City (New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Iowa City), which completes my first two weeks in the US, however from that point I think I may have to diverge from the original plan. I now plan to head south to St Louis and look at the work done by the amazing Little Bit Foundation and I can also give it a touch of Judy Garland when I meet anyone... Plus, I have a personal link to St Louis, with my mum's cousin (who I've never met) living just a few miles north over the Illinois border in Alton. I'm really looking forward to meeting her and it'll mean the world to my granddad (who is another Notts resident, living up in Collingham).
Having been talking to Cllr David Mellen, who has been a huge support in the work I do with the local authority in his role as Portfolio Holder for Early Intervention and Early Years, I'm then planning on hooking back east toward the Volunteer state. I'm planning to head across to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to hook up with the world-wide HQ of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, which has been such a huge success in Nottingham and given books to hundreds, if not thousands of under-5s in the city.
From here, it's another long bus trip, with a quick stop off in Atlanta, to The Big Easy, New Orleans. Here I'll visit the the soon-to-be 826 New Orleans, which is ghoulishlyghost themed! Seeing an 826 project in the process of setting up and perhaps offering my support to them in doing this for a day would, I feel, be invaluable to anything we perhaps plan to do when I return. Plus, I can't wait to sit on a tram and read Tennessee Williams' opening stage direction to Streetcar in the city. That will be a very, very special moment.
Next stop: Texas and I'll be bussing over to Houston - not because "we have a problem" but to link up with the awesome iWrite organisation before flying across the Lone Star State to Albuquerque and Taos, which will remain the same as before in my planning and I will excitingly get to go and visit the DH Lawrence ranch! I've always found Texas a fascinating place so Houston will be my first experience of it, but hopefully not my last as I'll want to return in the future.
From Albuquerque, it is the old itinerary in reverse stopping in at Tucson and their Raising a Reader programme, San Diego and their national leading summer reading programme Read by Design (not dissimilar to our Summer Reading Challenge), then up the Pacific coast of California to 826 programmes in LA and San Francisco plus Reading Partners in Oakland.
That should keep me busy for 5 weeks! Please, if you think that this research and development trip and the implementation of the things found in America that are working to improve children's and young people's engagement in their literacy learning are important, please consider supporting the Crowdfunder which will help me do all of this. Thank you!