By Monica Humphries, NationSwell, December 19, 2019
On bookshelves across the country, there are stories about mice and cookies, princesses with long hair and a very hungry caterpillar.
But in Arkansas, thousands of children won’t curl up with a parent in bed and listen to a bedtime story. Instead, they’ll listen to a recording of a family member reading them a story. That’s because 16% of children in Arkansas currently or previously have had a parent or guardian incarcerated — the highest percentage in the nation.
“Families serve a shared sentence with their incarcerated loved ones, so we’re trying to ease, if not break, that cycle,” Denise Chai, the director of outreach for The Storybook Project of Arkansas, told NationSwell.
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