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Chattanooga: Mural

By: Adam Crisp
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Teachers and the librarian at the Tommie F. Brown Academy of Classical Learning are pumped up about books.

And now the wall outside the school’s library tells the story. In big purple letters is the theme “Reading ... It’s big!”

Painted next to that is a massive purple dragon, a babbling rocky brook, the feet of a huge giant and other whimsical creatures created by Knoxville-based muralist Gale Hinton.

“We’re trying to promote the desire to read among children,” Ms. Hinton said Tuesday while taking a break from painting. “We want children to go into that library and enjoy a book.”

The mural, painted Monday and Tuesday, was paid for with a grant from Chattanooga Read Aloud. That group has funded more than 50 such murals throughout the Tennessee Valley over the last three years, Ms. Hinton said.

Brown Academy librarian Lindsey Melton McCarter said children don’t demand books like they should, and old-school libraries with austere and plain-white walls just don’t compel them to come inside.

“Before, we had to tell everyone how to find the library, and our doors looked just like every other door,” Mrs. Melton McCarter said. “We said we wanted our library to be a place that stood out, and Read Aloud said they could do that.”

Painted on either side of the library’s double doors, the mural — with vibrant purples, blues and green — elicited big-eyed stares and quizzical pointing from the school’s elementary-school aged pupils Tuesday. It took Ms. Hinton about 13 hours to finish the scene, she said.

Over the next few months, Mrs. Melton McCarter hopes the school will add “rain gutter” shelving that allows books to rest with their covers facing out so students can see interesting books they otherwise might not have checked out.

That’s something Read Aloud will help fund. And over the next few weeks a therapy dog will be brought to the library to provide an uncritical audience for students who otherwise might be uncomfortable reading out loud in front of others.

All that help from Read Aloud comes at a good time for the school, which is trying to become Tennessee’s first International Baccalaureate school, said principal Lea Ann Burk. That program encourages students to become lifelong learners by seeking information on their own outside the classroom in places such as the school library.

“Reading is a big part of that effort to become an IB school,” Mrs. McCarter said. “An IB is about inquiry-based learning. When students have a problem, the teacher is not the solution. The teacher can guide and prompt, but the students have to figure out the solution. ... We want them to come to the library to do that.”

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