Clark County Public Library’s Summer Reading Program kicks off

By Caitlyn Gregory | The Winchester Sun

Saturday marked the begin­ning of the Clark County Public Library Summer Reading Program. The com­mu­ni­ty was invit­ed out to par­tic­i­pate in the dinosaur-themed kick-off activ­i­ties and to earn prizes for any game they won. Lasting from 9am – 12pm, the event was well attend­ed and crowd­ed the entire three hours.

Misty Strain, the Head of Youth Services for CCPL, guid­ed the event and direct­ed people.

Strain explained that the library first start­ed host­ing a kick-off event for the Summer Reading Program in 2005. To host the event, the library works with CSLP, the Collaborative Summer Library Program, to coör­di­nate themes each year, with 48 of the 50 states participating.

Each year, the CSLP hires a dif­fer­ent artist to cre­ate a theme and art for the event. The artist helps cre­ate var­i­ous posters and T‑shirt designs that are giv­en out. This year, the event was themed around dinosaurs, archae­ol­o­gy, and pale­on­tol­ogy, with the slo­gan being “Unearth a Story.” The artist of the year was Tom Bonson, a famous pic­ture-book author and artist who spe­cial­izes in a car­toon­ish, whim­si­cal style.

The event fea­tured 12 booths for every­one to par­tic­i­pate in, rang­ing from sweet treat offer­ings to car­ni­val-style games. The booths includ­ed bal­loon ani­mals, cot­ton can­dy, snow cones, bas­ket­ball, corn­hole, face paint­ing, tem­po­rary tat­toos, can­vas paint­ing, a T‑Rex-themed ring toss, fish­ing-style rub­ber duck catch­ing, a bone toss, and a dinosaur bounce race.

All of the com­pet­i­tive booths offered small prizes to win­ners, rang­ing from can­dy to small rub­ber ducks and stuffed-ani­mal key­chains. All of the prizes were pro­vid­ed by the library and through var­i­ous donations.

The read­ing pro­gram itself lasts the whole sum­mer, dur­ing which kids are encour­aged to read at least once a day. To moti­vate them, each child receives a card to track their read­ing. Each card has four sets of 15 small dinosaurs for them to col­or each day they read. Once the child com­pletes 15 days of dinosaurs, they are allowed to come in and receive a free book from the tem­po­rary Summer Reading Store set up with­in the library. Along with this, for every dinosaur they fill in, they can enter one tick­et into a prize raf­fle at the end of the pro­gram. These prizes are much larg­er and include var­i­ous gam­ing con­soles, gift cards, and activ­i­ty sets.

Strain wrapped up the inter­view by stat­ing, “Really, we just want the kids to read; that’s basi­cal­ly our main moti­va­tion. We (want to) get it out there and we want every­one to have a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence at the library and for them to want to come back.”

Children are still able to join the read­ing pro­gram and are invit­ed to the library for all their oth­er sum­mer activ­i­ties. The library will be host­ing more dinosaur-themed events through­out the entire sum­mer and will be wrap­ping up the Summer Reading Program with a foam par­ty on July 28^th.