By Larry Wood

Cocky’s Reading Express is on the road to eliminating illiteracy in South Carolina one schoolchild at a time.

Since the outreach project began in 2005, Carolina students have volunteered to visit elementary schools in every corner of the state, reading books aloud to children and sharing the importance of learning to read.

Cocky, the program’s superstar whose popularity with children seems to rival that of Santa Claus, makes an appearance at the end of each story time. Cocky can’t read aloud, of course, but he could win an Oscar for his physical interpretation of The Little Red Hen.

The children receive a book to take home and make a verbal promise to Cocky to read the book to their moms and dads, brothers and sisters—even cats and dogs and goldfish. Cocky’s Reading Express, the only University mascot–sponsored literacy program in the country, gave away last winter its 10,000th book.

“The mission of the program is to combat illiteracy in South Carolina,” said Tommy Preston, the University’s Coordinator for Governmental and Community Relations who as Student Government treasurer and then president helped start Cocky’s Reading Express. “We show children that we still have fun reading and tell them that by learning how to read they can go to college, too.

“Cocky’s Reading Express started as an idea but has become a movement embraced by Carolina students, University faculty and staff, and the community.”

Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, first approached Student Government to develop a literacy program to complement the Children, Libraries, and Literacy campaign sponsored by the School of Library and Information Science. Student body leaders got on board immediately.

“Our objective is to reach the kids at that very formative age and get them excited, thrilled with the notion of reading. We want to instill that desire to read,” Bierbauer said. “Children have great enthusiasm. No matter what kinds of homes they come from, if you bring in a great big, fuzzy, red bird to read to them, you can hardly miss.

” During its first road trip, Cocky’s Reading Express traveled across the state, visiting more than 20 schools. Today, the Reading Express makes several shorter trips each month, often as part of literacy events at individual schools.

In January, students took Cocky’s Reading Express to the I-95 corridor from Dillon County to Jasper County. Before making the trip, all of the student volunteers watched Corridor of Shame: The Neglect of South Carolina’s Rural Schools, a documentary produced by Bud Ferrillo that examines the challenges rural school districts face in funding public education.

The film focused on aging and inadequate school buildings, but after visiting the area, Preston saw another need. “The biggest problem we saw was the lack of resources in these schools—computers, technology, and books,” Preston said. “We must continue to focus more on the I-95 corridor in the future.”

The trip to Dillon also provided Preston one of the most poignant moments since he began working with Cocky’s Reading Express three years ago. “The principal at Gordon Elementary School in Dillon spoke to us after we read to the students and gave them books,” Preston said. “You might not believe this,’ the principal said, ‘but for a number of the kids, that will be the only book that they have in their house.’ All of us left very emotional and more motivated than ever before to make a difference.”

Cocky’s Reading Express also allows students to be ambassadors for Carolina. “Our main focus initially was combating illiteracy in South Carolina, but it’s more than that now,” Preston said. “It’s mentorship. It’s outreach. It’s how we as the college generation can show young students in South Carolina that they can go to college and succeed in life.”

Since Preston graduated in May 2007, his successor, Ashley Wood, a junior English/pre-law major from Fort Mill, has been the student coordinator for Cocky’s Reading Express. “Watching the kids laugh and play with us is awesome,” she said. “But what I really appreciate, once the trip is over, is getting e-mails from parents of the students or teachers personally thanking us.”

When Cocky’s Reading Express began, students ran the program, but they now collaborate with a number of University partners. Athletics director Eric Hyman supports the program, and having student athletes participate as readers has added a new energy and dynamic. “Children in elementary schools think that it is so cool for a football player to come into their school,” Preston said. “For that football player to also say, ‘I’m in college and I love to read,’ makes the program even more exciting.”

Cocky’s Reading Express has developed a close partnership with the S.C. Center for Children’s Books & Literacy, an outreach program sponsored by Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and housed in the State Library in Columbia.

Ellen Shuler, the center’s executive director, and Preston are creating a new book exclusively about and for Cocky’s Reading Express with the help of President Sorensen, who has helped fund all the books the program has given away. The book will reinforce the program’s main ideas: reading is fun, reading should be shared, and reading is a family affair. “As the state’s literacy coordinator, Cocky’s Reading Express is a good fit for us,” Shuler said. “The main message we try to get across to these students is that no matter what they want to be—a teacher, a professional football player, or a doctor—they have to be able to read.”

For Samantha K. Hastings, director and professor in the School of Library and Information Science, Cocky’s Reading Express demonstrates a new way of looking at literacy. “We’ve recently begun talking about literacy in a plural form, saying literacies,” Hastings said. “It’s the ability to read and to discern what kinds of information we need. Cocky, in a way, is the perfect embodiment of that idea of multiple literacies. When Cocky engages children, there is more going on than just the words and pictures on the page.

“The success of Cocky’s Reading Express comes from the pledge that the children make to Cocky that they will read to their families. It just doesn’t get any better than that.” Preston will leave the University this summer and plans to attend law school in the fall, but Cocky’s Reading Express will continue."

“This is a long-term commitment for us. The neat thing, for me, is to have been with the program from the beginning and now to see how many people have become passionate about it. “ Our goal is to keep Cocky’s Reading Express going until we’re able to say that every child in South Carolina can read. Until every child is proficient in those important skills, our work won’t be done.

Roll on, Cocky, roll on.