Outdoor storytime with Miss Iowa

Join us for an outdoor storytime with the 2021 Miss Iowa, Grace Keller! This program will be held outdoors. Please bring a blanket or lawn chair and meet us in the library's "backyard." For all ages, no registration required.

Grace Lynn Keller is a graduate of the University of Iowa with a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication.  Grace was crowned Miss Iowa 2021 in June and will spend her year of service promoting her social impact initiative, Read to Succeed: Promoting Literacy in Grades K-3.  Her love of literacy was born through the great mentors she had as a child that pushed her to discover the passion she had for reading and writing.  Some of Grace’s favorite books include Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, The DaVinci Code, and The Handmaid’s Tale.  Grace is also the writer, host, and producer of her own true crime podcast, Grace is on the Case.  She recognizes that she would not be the writer, speaker, or communicator she is today without the role models she had growing up, and wants to serve as the same inspiration to kids across the state of Iowa.  Grace will represent Iowa in the 100 Anniversary Miss America Competition this December.

Grace’s social impact initiative, Read to Succeed, focuses on literacy mentorship with students grades K-3 in an effort to get as many students as possible meeting literacy benchmarks by third grade, as well as collecting books to donate to students who may not have access to literature outside the classroom. The mission specifically focuses on low-income school districts, which often have inequitable childhood literacy rates. Statistics show that students who do not reach proficiency by third grade are four times less likely to finish high school on time, and this jumps by 20% when a student experiences poverty. Pairing this knowledge with the fact that not finishing high school is linked to poorer mental and physical health outcomes, lifelong poverty, incarceration, and many other issues, it becomes crucial for a child to reach these benchmarks to ensure their future success.