AEP and Appalachian Power employees will read aloud to students at 268 elementary schools Thursday, November 16, in observance of West Virginia’s statewide Read to Me Day. On that day, a volunteer corps of 170 employees will read aloud to more than 13,000 students, and will donate 536 books to school libraries.
 
At each school employees will read the books In November and Scarecrow to a minimum of two classrooms, then donate the books they read to each school’s library. Both books have seasonal themes and were written by Cynthia Rylant, an award-winning children’s author who grew up in Raleigh County.
 
“Our goal in reading aloud at schools is to encourage a love of reading,” said Jeri Matheney, spokeswoman for the company. “Good readers make good students, and the best way to turn children into readers is to read aloud to them.”
 
The company began large-scale participation in West Virginia’s statewide Read to Me Day in 2001, and since that time has donated more than 2,000 books to school libraries and read aloud to more than 100,000 students.
 
Appalachian Power provides electricity to 1 million customers in Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee (as AEP Appalachian Power). It is a unit of American Electric Power, one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, with more than 5 million customers in 11 states. AEP ranks among the nation’s largest generators of electricity, owning nearly 36,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the U.S. AEP also owns the nation’s largest electricity transmission system, a nearly 39,000-mile network that includes more 765 kilovolt extra-high voltage transmission lines than all other U.S. transmission systems combined.