Cocky’s Reading Express™ took to the road recently for University of South Carolina students to talk about the importance of literacy and read to children in nine elementary schools in Marion, Dillon, Orangeburg and Jasper counties.

Student volunteers read to, and shared books with, more than 1,870 children on the importance of literacy Jan. 7 – 10.

At each stop, kindergartners through second graders were given copies of “Hello Cocky” by Aimee Aryal and “Barnyard Banter” by Denise Fleming to take home to read with their families.

Cocky’s Reading Express is a student-led literacy project done in cooperation with the university’s School of Library and Information Science and its South Carolina Center for Children’s Books and Literacy. It was founded by Tommy Preston Jr, coordinator of government and community relations for the university, while he was a student at the university

.Joining students were Ellen Shuler, executive director of the center,and Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communication and Information

Studies.Participating students were Nikesh Amin, Lauren Bailey, Alex Bryan, Andrew Epting, Andrew Gaeckle, Allen Klump, James Laura, Carole Joy Meudder, Nick Payne, Mary Stonecycpher and Ashley Wood. Wood, secretary of advancement for student government, coordinated the tour.