Reading Their Lines : Barbara Bain Helps Book Actors to Bring Stories to Life in Schools

The mission seemed impossible.

Read a story to first-graders drowsy from lunch and tuckered out from the playground? Kids whose tiny eyelids are already heavier than the afternoon air in their schoolroom?

Five-year-old Piaida Dixon yawned. Andreia Buck, 6, cradled her head on the table. Tyrine Soil, 7, seemed ready to nod off.

But that was before the visitor at their Watts classroom spoke up.

“If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk,” began actress Barbara Bain, her voice building. “When he’s finished, he’ll ask for a napkin.”

This would be no bedtime story. The performer, famous for her co-starring role in the television series “Mission: Impossible,” was bringing a book about a mouse to life. And Piaida, Andreia, Tyrine and a dozen other children at Grape Street School were coming alive too.

Book PALS--a crusade by television and film actors nationwide to encourage children to read--was on the road again.

Bain started the PALS program (short for Performing Artists for Literacy in Schools) three years ago. These days, more than 850 actors and actresses in Los Angeles, New York and Washington are involved.

The performers read to youngsters at 100 schools each week. The program is expanding this fall to Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco.

Show business is one of the reasons children need all the encouragement they can get to read, Bain said. “Libraries are closing and TV is so accessible--that’s my concern.”

Book PALS got its start by accident.

Bain was playing a board game with her daughter, actress Juliet Landau, in which the pair were supposed to rate randomly selected phrases by order of preference. When Bain drew “Reading to children” and gave it a low ranking, Landau was shocked.

“My daughter said she thought I liked to read to children. I told her I used to, but I didn’t do that anymore. But then I got to thinking: Why don’t I?”

Bain began volunteering to read at a park in Santa Monica. When she found herself enjoying it, she encouraged friends to do the same.

“Actors all have more time on their hands than they’d like,” she said. “And actors generally have a touch of the drama to them.”

Nearly 250 performers responded in a matter of days when the Screen Actors Guild Foundation sent out a notice explaining Bain’s idea. Soon, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley got the actors involved in an after-school enrichment program.

Children’s books have been an eye-opener for the actors.

“I went into this thinking I would be doing a nice thing,” said Gloria Melville, a Wilshire district resident who has appeared in shows such as “L.A. Law.”

“But then I realized there are actors who pay for acting classes that are exactly what I’m doing. When I read to the kids I become Mr. Owl or Miss Mouse. It’s a wonderful opportunity for an actor.”

An audience of children is like “30 little mirrors in front of you,” said Harry Hart-Browne, a Silver Lake resident who has acted on “Seinfeld” and “Married With Children.” “They give you instant feedback.”

And they are more succinct than Siskel and Ebert, said Gil Roscoe, a daytime TV actor from Sherman Oaks.

“The first time out was hard. After 20 minutes, one kid shouted out: ‘This is boring!’ They can be a tough audience.”

But the actors have received a rave review from the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. Last week, the presidentially appointed commission named Book PALS this year’s top citizens literacy project.

Back at Grape Street School, the children were excitedly helping Bain decide which book to pull next from her canvas bag. For over a year, she has read there every Tuesday.

Bain had checked out “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Joffe Numeroff and Felicia Bond, along with nine other books, from her local library. “The Beverly Hills library--but that sounds so snooty to say,” she confided out of earshot of the children.

For their part, the youngsters were quick to claim that Bain is one of their favorite TV actresses.

“I see her all the time with Big Bird,” said 7-year-old Alicia Dixon.

Now that , Bain said, is impossible.