This is a belated post. I meant to do this the day I had our annual Ice Cream Party at the end of August.

THANK THE BOOK GODS SUMMER READING IS OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I say book gods, because it seems less offensive somehow. Also, it just popped into my head so I typed it.

It was a long summer. I had a staff member plan the summer reading program because I was so busy with my teen grant and other programs. Let me just say that I have trouble delegating and this was extremely hard for me to let go of! Already thinking of some fun ideas for next summer.

We had some great prizes for the kids and it really motivated them. I sometimes feel like a bad librarian in the summer. Bribing children to read. But the way I see it, there are two types of kids in the summer: those that love to read and will read, and those who hate to read and won’t read. The ones that love to read are going to read anyway, so why not let them get an extra bonus and pat-on-the-back for doing it? And the ones who hate to read actually WILL read if they have a good reason to. (There is also a third category of cheater-kids but there’s nothing I can really do about it. Karma will take care of them at some point….)

Here are some stats that we are pretty proud of:

• A total of 515 kids (ages 0-13) participated in the Summer Reading Program
• 202 kids read 16,542 books
• 313 kids read 430,263 minutes

• A total of 60 teens participated
• they read 76,545 pages

We drew raffle prizes (the more you read, the more raffle tickets you earned for the prizes you wanted or you could pick a small prize.) There were some disappointed kids, but we really didn’t have any complaints from parents, which is kind of a miracle. To those kids I say “Reading is Winning!” like the lame-o I am.

We have a party at the end of the summer with a concert, ice cream and prizes. This year kids received their certificates and got to pick 2 extra prizes. Plus we had the ice cream sundaes, freeze pops, popcorn (courtesy of Southbridge Savings Bank, who also paid for our performer, David Polansky who was AMAZING as always!), as well as balloon animals/hats and henna tattoos. The bank also brought Moola the Cash Cow (i.e. guy dressed up as a big green and white cow.) This kids LOVED it!

Here are some pics taken by my favorite library page, Ali Beaudette. (And I’m just going to pretend its ok to post them)