Khloe Williams sat in a child-sized pink chair arranging the letters in an A-B-C puzzle, before feasting her eyes on the bookshelves.
“I want to read this one,” she said, pointing to the book she called her favorite, called “The Planets,” and then to a bigger book, “8 Little Planets.”
The curious 9-year-old, who enjoys gazing into the night sky and loves rainbows and puffy clouds, was stretching her imagination within a children’s library located in an unexpected place — LA County’s Men’s Central Jail.
The new children’s library inside the Visitor’s Center of the large jail that houses 3,500 inmates opened on Tuesday, Sept. 19, a joint venture between Gordon Philanthropies, Inc., an LA educational nonprofit, and the LA County Sheriff’s Department. The space is designed for children of incarcerated fathers to read, borrow and inhale books and manipulate puzzles and play games — materials they may not have at home or school.
Another aspect that is a little tougher to make happen logistically is to connect the fathers with their children in the same space in a way that strengthens the family bond hampered by a parent in jail.
While no one has yet figured out how to bring incarcerated men down to the Visitor’s Center, so far they’ve brought the books to the men and to the children. The fathers can make a recording much like a book-on-tape and that gets sent to the child at home, along with the actual paper book.
“My Dad gives me a recording and he sends me the book,” Khloe said. “When he reads it to me (on tape), I can follow along.”
Likewise, when Angelique Molina comes to the jail to visit her husband, Terrance Sheppard, they have to wait sometimes an hour or so and her daughter, Miracle Sheppard, 8, gets fidgety. Now, she can park her in the library, where she can be occupied, her Mom said. Her father has also sent his daughter the book on tape recorded in his voice.
“This is the first start for the children to…
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