Smack Dab in the Middle of Summer Reading

At the Lewisville Public Library in Lewisville, TX we are in the middle of Summer Reading and it is our busiest time of the year. Our Summer Reading for children and teens has two main components: a reading challenge and weekly educational (and entertainment) events. Our theme is “Every Hero Has a Story” through CSLP.

We have a soft launch of our Summer Reading the last day of public school and then have a Summer Reading Kickoff Party on the first Saturday in June – it’s an annual event for us. To promote the library’s summer offerings, we schedule visits to local schools.

The local school district is quite large, and we have 14 elementary schools within the city limits of Lewisville, plus charter and private schools. We send out emails to the principals and school librarians of the local public schools to see if they are interested in us visiting them at the end of the school year. What works best for us is having a separate presentation for each grade in the library (lasting about 15 minutes each), so our visits at each school last about 1 ½ to 2 hours. Sometimes we talk via the school morning announcements or in assemblies.

This year’s superhero theme made promoting Summer Reading very easy! Using this blog post on Bored Panda as inspiration, we decorated the glass in our Teen Point with sticky note art.

Each week during June and July we have events for children and teens. We’ve had some excellent presenters visit during our Monday evening elementary specials. This year we invited the Perot Museum and the Dallas Zoo to present. We even had a visit from Pete the Cat, who was the special guest at a preschool dance party in June! We will continue to offer weekly story times, elementary specials, and S.T.E.A.M. events until the end of July.

Last year we tested offering class reading logs to the childcare centers with whom we already partner, so that their children would have the opportunity to participate in our summer reading (and earn prizes!). We had moderate success with that, so one of the Youth Services Librarians reached out to the public summer school coordinator to propose a new partnership. (Thanks for reaching out to the schools, Elizabeth!) We provided the teachers with class reading logs to keep track of the books they read. From two separate summer school sites we had a total of over 400 additional students complete their reading goals that may not have been reached otherwise! We’ve also been told that they may include the Summer Reading as part of all summer school class requirements in 2016. Success!

Have you had any new wonderful presenters at your summer reading events this year? Tried out new programming? Did Pete the Cat visit your library too? Let me know how things are going at your library.

(All photos courtesy Lewisville Public Library)

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Our guest blogger today is Claudia Wayland. Claudia is the Youth Services Supervisor at the Lewisville Public Library in Lewisville, TX. She is on the ALSC Managing Children’s Services Committee and was selected to participate in the upcoming 2015 Texas Library Association TALL Texans Leadership Institute.

Please note that as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC.

If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at alscblog@gmail.com.