Director’s Thoughts – 6/21/2023

It’s Summer Reading time and it feels like most of my time is spent thinking, planning, talking, and even posting today’s Director’s Thoughts – 6/21/2023 about it! A time to engage families in the library even more so than usual and get kids excited about reading! Our library held our Summer Reading kickoff event on Monday night with over 350 people in attendance and judging from the past few days, I have a feeling our summer is going to be a very busy one.

As a former children’s librarian, summer reading is always an exciting time for me! With the kids out of school, we get to see a lot more families than usual taking advantage of what the library offers. It’s also really fun because we try to visit most of the schools in our district before they let out for the summer to get kids excited about the summer reading program. And you would be surprised by how many kids come into the library and exclaim, “I saw you at my school!” It really does provide a great connection and level of comfort for the kids.

Behind the Scenes

I don’t think most people really understand how summer reading works and how much planning goes into it! So, today, I’d love to share a little behind-the-scenes peek at summer reading in a public library. My library and many others across the country participate in the Collaborative Summer Reading Program (CSLP) which creates a theme each year and also provides artwork, marketing pieces, program ideas, and more to help libraries get inspired. This year’s theme is “All Together Now” and focuses on unity, kindness, and friendship. They will often work with a well-known illustrator to create the artwork for each year’s theme. This year’s illustrator is Frank Morrison, known for books like I Got the Rhythm and Let the Children March.

Each public library can then choose how summer reading works best for them and what ages they want to focus on. Our library offers an eight-week summer program with extensive activities for families to participate in as well as incentives for reading. Every library works a little differently, so it might vary in your hometown. It’s also important to note the age group of participants. We offer summer reading for kids entering Kindergarten – 12th grade and also have a summer reading program just for adults as well. And of course, we don’t forget about our youngest library users, we have an ongoing program called 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten for kids from birth – until they start Kindergarten.

Logging Reading

In my library, we use an online system called Beanstack to allow families to track their reading. For our K – 8th grade kids, we track reading time. For many years we tracked the number of titles a child read, but time is a much better measurement to be as fair as possible. 20 minutes is 20 minutes and in that time a child may read five easy reader books or one chapter of a longer novel. For our teens and adults, we asked for a quick review of the book they read – just a sentence or two! We try to make the tracking and logging process as simple as possible because we don’t want families bogged down in recording reading, we want them to actually be reading.

Beyond Reading

Summer reading also means programming and lots of it! With the kids out of school we have a little more flexibility as to what and when we can offer programs. We try to accommodate as many families as possible changing the day and time we offer programs for different age groups. Just for a reference point, we’re offering 98 programs over the course of eight weeks! Often with multiple programs happening per day. And the library staff really tries to provide a balance between age groups, types of activities, days, and times. It’s a fun (and very busy) time at the library!

But not only that, but we also offer passive programs or things that kids can participate in without having to be at the library on a specific day and time. We offer four different grab-and-go activities during the summer – simple crafts or projects that kids can do at home. For reference, we have 200 kits for each of the four activities. It’s a lot of prep work, but since COVID we have reached a new group of people in our community – grandparents! They absolutely love picking up these kits to have on hand when the grandkids are visiting.

And there are other activities in the library to do as well whenever you visit. We have a “Share the Love” display where kids can write down their favorite books. We have a “Guess the Holiday” activity with photos of holiday celebrations from around the world that kids can guess. And we have a scavenger hunt for country flags that are hidden in the library as well.

Incentives

Incentives

We offer a variety of incentives for kids to complete the summer reading program. We have different levels of reading (amount of time) and have trinkets, and food coupons for local restaurants for each level. And we also have a handful of raffle baskets that kids can earn tickets for by doing a bunch of fun activities (another passive program we offer). And the coolest thing we do for our K – 4th graders is offer a reading medal when they read a certain amount of time. The kids LOVE earning a medal and we do a whole medal ceremony at the end of the summer to present the medals to the kids (and give them a little peek at fall programming that starts in September).

So, if you’re still reading all the way down here, my goal for this month’s Director’s Thoughts – 6/21/2023 was two-fold. One, to show you a little bit behind-the-scenes of what goes on in preparation for summer reading, and two to encourage you to check out your local library and sign up for summer reading as well! If you’re looking for great book suggestions, poke around the blog for dozens of book lists or check out this one – 25 Middle Grade Books Set During Summer Vacation. Happy reading this summer!