Paige Woodford buries herself in the corner of a sofa and studies the colorful pages of the children’s picture book All I can be She listened to her father read Mercer Mayer’s classic about growing up and dreaming big.
The 11-year-old mouths the words but sits alone until her mother, Danika Letander, snuggles up next to her. Together they listen to the deep voice of Kyle Woodford played from a recording.
This is the only way Woodford can read to Paige or the other eight children in the couple’s blended family. His current home is a prison cell at the Headingley Correctional Centre west of Winnipeg.
“Sometimes it’s hard because they cry and get all whiny and I’m alone,” Letander said of the children, who range in age from three to 15.
Woodford was arrested in March and is awaiting trial, but a date has not yet been set. Letander has no idea how long she will be alone.
However, she knows that Woodford’s voice calms the children, so she picks up the accompanying recordings and books.
“It’s incredible. It means so much to them that they can hear their father,” Letander said.
“When I got them, I cried a little. Now I sometimes close my eyes and think he’s just there, reading a book to the children.”
The books and recordings are made possible through a program called Get the Story Out, run by the Literacy Division of the John Howard Society (JHS) of Manitoba, and are available to any inmate at the Winnipeg Remand Centre, Milner Ridge Correctional Centre, Stony Mountain Institution or Headingley.
Once a month, a volunteer records the inmate reading a book – or several books if he has several children. The recording is made into a CD, which is gift-wrapped with the book and sent by mail. An MP3 file is also created and sent by email.
“And then they can listen to their parents tell them a story, and they can read along. So it’s a really neat program,” says John Samson Fellows, a literacy teacher at JHS.
“I think people forget that it’s not just about locking someone up, but that a whole network of people, families and communities is affected. And the fate of children of incarcerated parents is often overlooked,” he said.
“That’s why it’s really important to maintain that connection… the sound of caring, the sound of love.”
With Woodford, phone calls are limited to 15-minute conversations, leaving little time to visit Letander and the individual children who live in Fairford in Manitoba’s Interlake region, about 210 kilometres from Headingley.
And this only applies if a telephone is available.
“I guess there are only three or two phones on offer and a lot of people want to talk to their families,” Letander said.
“After 10:30 p.m. he is locked up and we no longer hear his voice.”
The first shipment of books and recordings arrived in late July and they have made a huge difference, she said. There are four, one for each of the youngest children: Celeste, 3, Kylie-Dania, 4, Daytona, 6, and Paige.
“They pulled it out and saw it was a book, and I said, ‘Listen to the recording,'” Letander said.
“When they heard their father’s voice reading the books, they all became emotional.”
The program was first introduced 15 years ago but is being revived after being put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re just getting back into full swing … so we took the opportunity to tweak the program a little bit,” said Samson Fellows, who also runs weekly literacy classes at the detention center and helps former inmates write resumes.
His partner, composer and singer-songwriter Christine Fellows, volunteers to arrange the music, giving the recordings a professional touch “and making them special for the children,” says Samson Fellows, who is also a well-known musician.
“Hopefully it’s something they can keep and cherish.”
Letander regularly accesses the recordings, especially when things aren’t going quite right and she needs a break.
“You read along with him. It might be something like a quiet hour,” she said.
“When I wake up around 2 a.m. and can’t sleep or am tossing and turning, I hear it and it alone makes me cry.”
Besides providing some relaxation and a connection to Woodford, the recordings helped in other ways, Letander said.
Celeste, 3 years old and unable to speak, now says some words, such as “daddy” and “hi” and “up” and “down,” Letander said.
And Daytona, who never looked at a book and was only interested in video games, didn’t even pick up a controller in the first week after the recording arrived.
“Now he wants his father to send him more. He can’t wait for his next book,” Letander said.
Most of the books for the John Howard Society’s various reading programs are donated by Whodunit Mystery Bookstore and McNally Robinson Booksellers. The organization has also just entered into a partnership with McNally, which offers books at a discounted price for the public to donate to Get the Story Out.
“We’ve been using used books for a long time, but I really want them to be brand new. I think that’s an important part of unwrapping a gift and what these kids deserve,” Samson Fellows said.
The books and recorded recordings are assembled in John Howard’s office and packaged with the child’s name on the front next to a colorful bookmark.
“It’s a gift in itself,” said Letander.
And that’s exactly how Samson Fellows hopes it comes across.
“We want it to be presented as a gift from the parents – make it special, an occasion,” he said.
“There’s no real way for (incarcerated people) to send gifts, so this is one way we can help them do that.”
Danika Letander says when her children listen to their father read a story, they calm down. Kyle Woodford is in Headingley Prison, where a program called Get the Story Out recorded him reading books and then sent the recordings and books to his children.
