THE READING RACE BEGINS

Library celebration kicks off summer program

On Monday, June 2, the Dripping Springs Community Library hosted its summer kickoff party with free family activities and signups for the “Color Our World” summer reading program. The event featured face painting, a petting zoo, kidfriendly archery and axe throwing stations and frozen treats.

“It's been amazing today. We doubled the event attendance from last year,” said Christina Thompson, communications manager for the Beyond Books, Building Community campaign. “Last year we saw around 300 people. So far today we're only an hour and a half in and we're over 600 people.”

At the halfway point of the event, the children's librarian had already signed up over 200 people for summer reading.

“This is the first year that we're using an app called Beanstack to track summer reading,” Thompson said. “And what’s great about that is it ties in with what children are using at school.” When parents sign their kids up on the app, they'll be able to select a challenge that's appropriate to their age range and it will log the number of minutes read over summer. For example, a child who's 8 years old and reads 600 minutes will qualify for a free book at the end of summer.

“Our children's librarian has a whole treasure trove of books for children to select when they complete the challenge,” Thompson said.

The “Color Our World” summer reading program is available for adults as well.

“Adults can log their reading minutes over summer and our adult programming director has selected some gift cards that adults can qualify for, too,” Thompson said.

For more information on the summer reading program and on the variety of other activities that will be going on at the library this summer, visit www.dscl. org.