725 youth participate in Communiuty Library Summer Reading Club

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Sum­mer Read­ing pro­grams are more than fun activ­i­ties, said Com­mu­nity Library’s Head of Youth Ser­vices Fonda Kendrick. Stud­ies show that chil­dren who do not read over sum­mer months lose some of the read­ing pro­fi­ciency they gained dur­ing the pre­vi­ous school year; and read­ing activ­i­ties with par­ents is also impor­tant for early child­hood and pre-school development.

The sum­mer of 2012 has come and gone, stu­dents are back at school, and Kendrick has had time to review the library’s Sum­mer Read­ing Club totals — and she said the num­bers are impressive.

“Com­mu­nity Library’s Sum­mer Read­ing Club attracted 725 youths this year, ages zero to 18,” Kendrick said. “The 2012 theme was Dream Big — Read! and over 150 preschool­ers par­tic­i­pated, along with 443 ele­men­tary stu­dents and 129 young adults.”

Kendrick said preschool­ers logged over 6,800 books, school-agers tal­lied close to 5,300 hours of read­ing time, and young adults read almost 4,800 hours over the summer.

Four Top Reader awards were pre­sented in the youth sum­mer read­ing clubs. Logan and Gavin Ewing tied as Top Preschool read­ers at 350 books each.

The Kinder­garten to Sec­ond Grade Top Reader Award ended in a tie between Bryson and Jaden Part­low, with 51 hours of read­ing each.

Mary Gray took top hon­ors in the Third to Fifth Grade group for the sec­ond year run­ning, log­ging 181 hours; and Lau­rel Erick was named top reader in the Young Adult group with 200 hours.

“We had a good turnout this year,” Kendrick said. “And we couldn’t have done it with­out our ter­rific vol­un­teers, both teens and adults. We’re so for­tu­nate to have a com­mu­nity that actively sup­ports our pro­grams both through par­tic­i­pa­tion and volunteerism.”

Com­mu­nity Library thanks the fol­low­ing orga­ni­za­tions for their gen­er­ous dona­tions to the youth read­ing clubs: Cincin­nati Reds; Colum­bus Clip­pers; Colum­bus Crew; Colum­bus Motor Speed­way; Colum­bus Museum of Art; Com­mu­nity Library Friends; COSI; Donato’s Pizza; Dublin Irish Fes­ti­val; Ken­tucky Horse Park; Kings Island; Magic Moun­tain Fun Cen­ter — Polaris; McDonald”s; Ohio Renais­sance Fes­ti­val; Preser­va­tion Parks; Splat­ter­Park Paint­ball Games; Taco Bell; Tecum­seh! Out­door Drama; Whit’s Frozen Cus­tard, The Wilds and Young’s Jer­sey Dairy.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.