FRANKFORT, KY -- For the fourth consecutive year, Kentucky Power Company is sponsoring "Read to Me Day" in three eastern Kentucky counties. On Friday, Nov. 9, approximately 30 company employees will visit 14 elementary schools in Carter, Letcher and Johnson Counties, to emphasize the joy and importance of reading.

"Read to Me Day is a program that gained wide acceptance in counties Kentucky Power serves," said Tim Mosher, president and COO. "In the three previous years, our employees have read to thousands of students in Eastern Kentucky. At each school we visit, we emphasize the joy and importance of reading, then read aloud a children’s book selected especially for the event by a group of our employees," he said.

The book selected for this year’s event is "Silver Packages" a beautifully written and illustrated book that depicts the Christmas-time story of a boy who waits beside the railroad tracks for an annual Christmas train that makes its way through coal towns and hollows each year. The train delivers presents to deserving children and each year the boy waits for that one special gift to be tossed to him that will guide him to the true meaning of Christmas. It is an endearing book, based on actual events and written by award-winning children’s author Cynthia Rylant. It is beautifully illustrated by Chris Soentpiet, recipient of the 1996 Illustrators Gold Medal.

Read to Me Day is becoming an annual tradition in Eastern Kentucky. The company piloted the program in 2004 in Pike County, and now offers the program, on a rotating basis, to schools in its 20-county service territory.

Each Read to Me Day, Kentucky Power volunteers read to second graders at schools that choose to participate. There is no cost to the schools and once the volunteer finishes reading the book, he or she donates it to the school’s library collection. This gives the students a chance to check the book out on their own. The volunteers also provide students an activity booklet on electricity and electrical safety, and encourage students to "play it safe" around electricity.

"Reading is fundamental to success – in life, in careers and in business," Mosher pointed out. "By championing reading for fun and development we are investing in future opportunities for our children. That’s something important to Kentucky Power and our employees."

Kentucky Power is an operating unit of American Electric Power and provides electricity to approximately 175,000 customers in all or parts of 20 Eastern Kentucky counties.
 
American Electric Power is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, delivering electricity to more than 5 million customers in 11 states. AEP ranks among the nation’s largest generators of electricity, owning more than 38,000 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. AEP’s transmission system directly or indirectly serves about 10 percent of the electricity demand in the Eastern Interconnection, the interconnected transmission system that covers 38 eastern and central U.S. states and eastern Canada, and approximately 11 percent of the electricity demand in ERCOT, the transmission system that covers much of Texas. AEP’s utility units operate as AEP Ohio, AEP Texas, Appalachian Power (in Virginia and West Virginia), AEP Appalachian Power (in Tennessee), Indiana Michigan Power, Kentucky Power, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, and Southwestern Electric Power Company (in Arkansas, Louisiana and east Texas). AEP’s headquarters are in Columbus, Ohio.