Prompted by Abby the Librarian’s Sum­mer Read­ing posts, here’s a descrip­tion of how sum­mer read­ing works at my library.

We kick off the first Sun­day in June with Children’s Day on the Ped Mall. Children’s Day is within the larger Arts Fest for all ages. Music, crafts, magi­cians, giant dinosaur sculp­tures, bub­bles, etc. etc. along with reg­is­tra­tion for the Sum­mer Read­ing Program.

The library has a children’s, teen and adult sum­mer read­ing pro­grams. Teens are within the adult ser­vices depart­ment at our library so I’ll just be talk­ing about the children’s pro­gram here. There are three dif­fer­ent task sheets, Read-to-Me, Grades K-2 and Grades 3–6. While each sheet has dif­fer­ent tasks, the idea is the same for all of them. There are 30 tasks to choose from and when the chil­dren have com­pleted fif­teen they choose a book prize and get some lit­tle trin­kets as well. The tasks include broadly-based read­ing, lis­ten­ing and view­ing activ­i­ties (read an award-winning book, read a non­fic­tion book, lis­ten to an audio­book, etc.) designed to high­light the many col­lec­tions in the Children’s Room. There are also activity-based tasks (attend a sto­ry­time, write a book review, describe a coun­try you’d like to visit, etc.).

We start our eight weeks of spe­cial pro­grams one week after reg­is­tra­tion begins. Our big day is Thurs­days. After a spe­cial guest sto­ry­time in the morn­ing, we have spe­cial guest pro­grams in the after­noon for chil­dren who have fin­ished kinder­garten through Grade 6 (pup­pet shows, Mad Sci­ence, World of Dance, etc.). At the same time there is a preschool play pro­gram so that there is some­thing for every­body in multi-aged fam­i­lies. This is a sto­ry­time fol­lowed by a craft (a treat because we don’t nor­mally do crafts at sto­ry­time). The other spe­cial preschool event in the sum­mer is Sto­ries in the Park held twice a week in two dif­fer­ent parks. The other spe­cial school-age pro­grams are Wii gam­ing one after­noon and a cou­ple of read-to-a-therapy-dog times. Towards the end of the sum­mer read­ing pro­gram there is a Book Fes­ti­val in town and there are lots of spe­cial children’s activ­i­ties con­nected with that that we and other county libraries par­tic­i­pate in as well.

Our reg­u­lar sto­ry­time and Book Babies pro­gram­ming con­tinue through the sum­mer as well.

While the pro­grams and sum­mer read­ing keep things hop­ping, what really keeps us the busiest dur­ing the sum­mer are all the day camps that come in. There can be up to four sum­mer camps in at the same time. That’s when it gets really crazy!