The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Nation’s Center for the Performing Arts, teams up with RealNetworks’ newly designed Take5, to put some of the most popular children’s books on computer screens around the world. Via the Kennedy Center’s extensive web site (http://Kennedy-Center.org,) children and their families can download such Kennedy Center commissions as Judith Viorst’s classic Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Debbie Allen’s Brothers of the Knight, and Harlem by Walter Dean Myers, and How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman as read by the authors with the original illustrations.

"The Kennedy Center is proud to offer this unique opportunity to young people and their families," said Kennedy Center President Lawrence J. Wilker. "Storytime Online is another example of how the Kennedy Center invites the audience to delve further into the arts."

Each of these beloved stories have been brought to life on Kennedy Center stages*, and now the Nation’s Center for the Performing Arts wants to make the unique power and magic of these children’s books more accessible. Literacy is imperative to a child’s success, and now computer know-how is becoming as important. In a unique alliance, the Kennedy Center Youth and Family Programming as well as the Kennedy Center Electronic Media Department team up with RealNetworks to provide this interactive, online program that is as educational as it is fun.

The Kennedy Center takes a leadership role in national performing arts education policy and programs by presenting, commissioning, creating, and touring performances for students, teachers, adults, and families. Since its establishment in 1972, the Kennedy Center’s Education Department believes that the inclusion of the performing arts in a broad-based curriculum improves the quality of a child’s educational experience.