One of My Favorite Things

May 07, 2012

May is here, and The Summer Reading Program will start the last week of this month. And this year, we're excited to Dream Big and Own the Night with children and teens all over the area.

In preparation for this, several of our staff members go around to area schools and talk to kids about The Summer Reading Program. I'm lucky enough to be one of the staff members who gets to talk at local schools. Going around and getting kids excited about reading is one of my favorite parts of my job.

Some schools will have a large assembly, and we get 5 to 10 minutes to tell all of the grades about SRP. Most of the schools, however, have us talk to individual classes or to groups grade by grade. This is the best way of doing it because I can structure my talk to the age level of the kids. I usually get about fifteen minutes per group, but it’s worthwhile. The kids love seeing the books that they can earn just by reading 360 minutes (that’s only 6 hours—if you read 30 minutes a day, you can earn your first prize in less than two weeks!).

What I especially love is that later in the summer, kids see me at the desk or walking around the Library and they exclaim. "You came to my school!" Just thinking that I might have had a small part in encouraging a kid to read during the summer feels pretty great!

Annette A.
Blue Ridge Branch