Summer Reading Club usually means groups, crafts, programs, stories, prizes. How do you handle that during a pandemic? With groups, crafts, programs, stories, and prize! Our amazing library staff mounted an engaging, stimulating, thoroughly enjoyable Summer Reading Club online this year, using their skills, imagination, and technology.
This year’s theme was “Bee A Champion Reader,” tying in with the One City, One Book title The Honey Bus. And in spite of all the challenges this year, the 2020 Summer Reading Club had 1,050 readers who logged more than 1,002,224 reading minutes! Yes, that’s over a million! Young readers had access to magic shows, crafts, story times, and more, all delivered virtually in the comfort of their own homes. Staff engaged older readers with challenging creative writing prompts, teen trivia, book and movie clubs, and book recommendations. Adult readers were treated to the library’s “Gentle Reads” recommendations – so welcome during the current stressful times.
At the program’s end, each participant who had earned enough points or read ten or more hours was entered into a drawing; fifty randomly-selected winners received a $10 Target gift card, purchased with funds from the Friends of the Thousand Oaks Library.
Library staff shared some responses from the winners; from one happy seven year-old prize winner:
Dear Library, Thank you so much for selecting me as the winner for summer reading program. I was surprised and happy when my mom showed the mail. Thank you for encouraging me to read more.
And from a happy parent:
Thank you for your email! My daughter is SO thrilled! Winning this was her only goal this summer!
The Friends of the Thousand Oaks Library are proud to sponsor this year’s Summer Reading Club, as we have sponsored every summer’s program for over thirty years. We are especially proud this year to support our library and the amazing way the staff has responded to the challenge of providing library services during the pandemic. There’s no library like our library, and it’s an honor to raise the funds that support it.