Library Summer Reading program a success

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Strathmore Municipal Library wrapped up its summer reading programs over the Aug. 20 weekend with a showing of the movie Shrek and serving hot dogs to folks attending. 

Summer Reading program coordinator Karissa Carlson said this year’s program has been a huge success among kids in the community. 

“It was great. We had a great turnout, we had a lot of fun events … the kids really enjoyed all the weekly themes that we had with mythical creatures being one of the favorites,” said Carlson, explaining that this year’s summer reading program took on a fantasy theme, with events and activities having started in the late spring for those registered.

Participating kids were also being encouraged with light competition to get as many logged reading hours in as they could.

“We had an overall summer reading goal this summer of 800 hours (between) all the kids to complete and they made it, which is like super exciting,” said Carlson. “At the beginning of summer we were a little worried because we weren’t getting a ton of reading logs back in at first … but as the summer progressed, the kids got more and more excited to reach that goal.”

As another way to encourage kids to read, their logged hours would contribute to a display in the library that showed the growth of Rapunzel’s hair and reaching the 800 hour goal would see it touch the ground of her tower.  

“We had her hair growing as they were getting to the goal, so once it reached the ground, we knew that they had made their goal,” said Carlson. “And you could see them with each week (asking), ‘Is it? Is it closer?’ so they were really excited as it got closer to the goal.”

For some of the events in the program, the team had not anticipated such a high turnout of participants, but Carlson described it as a good problem to have.

Other comments, especially from parents, indicated interest in having longer programming as opposed to the 90-minute time slots used this year for each age group.

“Going forward, I think it would be nice if they were able to do some longer programming and I definitely think the reading goal was something that would be good to continue, maybe even push for a higher kind of goal, see if we can really push the limit on that one,” said Carlson. “If there was more ways to go into the community and do events, rather than just like having everything at the library, that would be cool if we could do that kind of thing in the future.”

According to Carlson, the library has every intention of continuing the summer reading programs next year and is in the process of setting up their fall agenda.