“Merry Christmas, my babies,” a grinning inmate at Boulder’s Riverside prison said to the camera on Monday morning, a fully dressed Christmas tree looming behind her. “I’m going to read you The Mitten. My mom used to read this to me when I was a little girl.”
With that, she tucked into the 1996 children’s classic, helping launch a holiday initiative that will involve up to 100 prisoners across the state reading the Jan Brett bestseller to their children, who will then receive the book and video as a gift.
The joint Department of Corrections and Montana State Library program is funded by an $8 million Preschool Development Birth Through Five grant awarded to Montana’s Department of Public Health and Human Services in 2022 by the federal Department of Education and the Administration for Children and Families.
