PORTSMOUTH — The Scioto County Public Library system is hard at work running its Summer Reading program that emphasizes the importance of regular reading year-round by engaging the community in a series of fun reading activities throughout the summer months.

Summer Reading kicked off June 5 and wraps up July 15, with a Summer Reading finale event on July 22.

There are 108 programs scheduled for youth, 35 for teens, and 21 for adults.

“For the juvenile patrons we have, we do this so they don’t educationally backslide during the summer months,” Lisa Lavender, youth services coordinator said. “We want to keep them reading so that they’re still understanding that reading is important, even when they’re not in school. So, it basically keeps them in reading groups.”

The youth Summer Reading program has been ongoing for a long time within the library system and the adult category is still relatively new by comparison, but Adult Services Coordinator Anna Collister believes they’re equally important.

“Our adults read throughout the year already and it is really nice to give them a little bit back for being great patrons,” Collister said. “They get something a little extra when they come in for summer.”

The library’s Katie Williams explained that the library system is all about families and finding activities for everyone is instrumental in their programming success.

“It is nice, because we have a lot of families that come into our library locations. So, we don’t want to only cater to the juvenile patrons,” Katie Williams explained. “The parents are bringing them in and we want to make sure they’re doing something fun and engaging, not only for the kids 12 and under, where it is important to read books over the summer so they don’t lag when the school year starts, but it allows them to also have the adults and teens involved in the summer fun, too.”

For youth, they have a challenge of reading 20 books throughout the program. According to Williams, these books can be stories they’ve read themselves, or be audio books or books parents have read to them.

“So far, and we’re not quite three weeks in, but we’ve had 292 kids sign up throughout the county and we’ve had 61 meet their goals,” Lavender said.

Williams said they also offer bonus books and many of the kids who have surpassed their goals have continued on to read bonus books that go above their individual goals.

The teen and adult categories are also performing well in the challenge.

“We’ve had over 400 register for the adult category and we’ve had 190 already complete their goal, which is just awesome,” Collister said. “For teens, we’ve had 41 sign up and 16 have completed.”

The library’s well-stocked and planned programming throughout the county brings out a lot of people with differences and they’re welcoming to all. According to Williams, they receive positive comments all of the time from families who visit one of their locations. One recent comment came from a grandmother who brought her grandson into a location for a visit during Summer Reading.

“We just received a post from a lady who brought her autistic grandson in and she commented on how kind the children’s department staff were and how they made him feel how we was welcome back and could enjoy the library,” Lavender said.

The trio explained it isn’t too late to sign up for summer reading activities. People are welcome to register up to the closing day and have until the wrap party to complete their goals.

Outside of the summer reading events, there are also hundreds of events throughout the year hosted by the library, from specialty events like the Bridgerton Ball to a slew of monthly scheduled events throughout their many locations, including the famous Book Mobile. Follow them online to stay updated on their activities. The Portsmouth Daily Times will report on some of the July activities this weekend.

“Most of the programming that we offer, especially the juveniles and teens events, is free,” Williams said. “We may have a couple adult programs that have a small fee, but not many. So, on top of the summer reading activities, we have a ton of programming and so many fun activities. We’re offering free snacks at all of our teen events, thanks to a WSAZ grant. Our local history department also recently expanded their free programming. So, we’re offering a lot of free programming and we’re excited.”

Reach Joseph Pratt at (740) 353-3101, by email at [email protected], © 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved