Missouri book series targets new adult readersBy KELSI STOLTENOW Since retiring from her career as a librarian, Rebecca Schroeder spent more than a decade working firsthand with Columbia’s adult readers and 16 years editing a new adult reader book series. Committed to education, Schroeder volunteered from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s as a literacy tutor for Columbia’s Literacy Action Corps and as a GED tutor at the Adult Learning Center in Douglass High School. According to its Web site, the corps serves 120 adults a year who are either learning to read or learning the English language; the learning center currently works with more than 700 students. Schroeder said in the early 1990s, national concern developed over the functional and general illiteracy affecting American adults. In response, the Missouri Humanities Council set up a grant program to fund the creation of reading material for adults who read at a fourth- to sixth-grade reading level. At the time, Schroeder was tutoring at the Adult Learning Center. One day, she brought a book with her about an Indian mound in Pemiscot County to talk about with two women she was tutoring. Pemiscot was the women’s home county, and they were thrilled to be able to study something they knew firsthand. “Their reaction convinced me that most people are interested in their own part of Missouri, or their own part of any place in the world in which they live,” Schroeder said, “and I knew then that it was a reaction that was useful.” Schroeder gathered three friends and piloted a grant-sponsored new adult readers’ series, now known as the Missouri Heritage Readers series and published by the University of Missouri Press. The series caters to new adult readers’ needs by adding photos to reinforce the text, using active language like newspapers do and gearing its content towards adult interests — Missouri adults, specifically. Since its first publication in 1994, 26 books have been published in the series with topics such as Jane Froman, a World War II-era movie and singing star who grew up in Columbia, the community of Arrow Rock and Missouri’s German immigrant settlements. Beth Chandler, assistant marketing manager for the University of Missouri Press, said the series is still one of the press’ best sellers. After editing the series for more than 15 years, Schroeder said she’s preparing to retire from the position that, after her original retirement, morphed into another full-time job. She didn’t mind, though. “It just seemed like an interesting thing to do,” she said. “It fulfills a need.”
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