Improve Reading Skills

Area schools and literacy programs seek volunteers to help children and adults improve reading skills and to assist in related projects. Among them are: Pleasant Plains Elementary, 8300 Pleasant Plains Road, in the Loch Raven Village area of Baltimore County, is seeking reading tutors for third-, fourth- and fifth-graders Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Contact: Karen Gieron, 410-887-3549. If your school or organization would like to be included in this listing, call Sundial at 410-783- 1800 and enter code 6130.

CHILDREN'S BOOKS line the North Avenue office of Tom Bowmann, and they're not there for decoration. "I try to read one every day," says Baltimore's first director of reading. "It's amazing how reading a child's book with adult eyes puts a different light on things. It's very helpful in my new job." Bowmann, 50, will need all the help he can get. All he has to do, as prescribed by a school system "Reading by 9" task force in a report issued in May, is get a handle on the city's many reading programs, evaluate them, eliminate the ineffective ones and beef up those that work.