December 16th: You Read Like Betty White

Lately it seems as if Betty White is the new black. She premiers Superbowl commercials, co-stars with People's sexiest man alive and hosts Saturday Night Live. Golly gee, that naive Sue Ann Nivens certainly has come a long way. Have you ever wondered, though, what it would be like to have Betty White as a Grandma at story time? Or maybe you'd like give a listen to Frodo or Sam Gamgee reading from a contemporary picture book classic? How about Darth Vadar reading a moving, poetic account of African American history?

Thanks to the Screen Actors' Guild Foundation, you can do all of this and more. At Storyline Online, you will find video clips of prominent Hollywood actors reading stories for children. Betty White takes on Gene Zion's classic, Harry the Dirty Dog, Sean Astin reads one of his daughter's favourites, David Shannon's A Bad Case of Stripes, Elijah Wood tackles Satoshi Kitamura's Me and My Cat?, and just in time for the holidays, Lou Diamond Phillips gives an excellent rendition of Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express. It's James Earl Jones' reading of To Be a Drum by Evelyn Coleman that impressed me most. Go, have a listen. It's definitely worth the trip.