We went to the library yesterday.
This is not all that uncommon a trip for us. The girls have had library cards since before they could walk, and for a while it felt like we were supporting a significant portion of their annual budget with our late fees. I worked there for several years when I was finishing up my dissertation, and in addition to accumulating a vast reservoir of stories regarding how not to manage employees (stories that came in handy when I actually had to manage employees), I also had the advantage of going there everyday and turning in my books on time. We still check out a lot of books, but now we get late fees. It’s not a bad trade.
Yesterday was a little different, because Lauren turned in her last card for the Summer Reading Program.
Every summer the library puts together a new program designed to encourage kids to read. And every summer Tabitha and Lauren ransack it for prizes, since reading is one of the things they do anyway. This makes me very proud.
This year the library decided that instead of an ongoing program where you earned points all summer to exchange for this or that prize, they would have four different levels with a prize at the end of each one, and when you were done you were done.
Well.
We signed up on June 12. June 14 was the first day you could turn in your level for a prize, and by that point Tabitha was already there, with Lauren close behind. Tabitha finished the entire program by the 26th, and probably would have done so sooner except that it would take us a few days to get back to the library to turn in her card. She was the fifth kid done the whole program, and she chose a book on the history of codes as her big prize.
It took Lauren a bit longer, which is only fair as she is a bit younger, but yesterday she turned in her card and got her big prize. She went for the Mystery Grab Bag, which had a number of cool things in it – a couple of coupons at local restaurants, some orange-flavored lip gloss, and so on.
We also turned in two entire shopping bags full of books and managed to take out less than half that, which is a victory especially since there was another half a bag at home that we just renewed. The prizes are won but the reading continues, and this is a marvelous thing.
Good work, ladies.
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2 comments:
You're being modest. Kids who read books in our days?
Excellent work, young ladies.
This is the first year that Christopher has been old enough to do the reading program at our library and he has already filled one card and is wowrking on another. Our program doesn't have a top level, it just goes until mid august when they have a party and prizes and kids with more than 100 hours get their names in the local paper. He is well on his way.
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