365 Photos Day 163

163/365

Much of today has been spent fine-tuning the final things for the Summer Reading Program, which starts, well, later today, I guess (Monday, 13 June).

This year's official theme is something along the lines of One World, Many Stories (or something like that. I can't remember.). We rarely completely follow the official theme, though. Basically I take the/an idea, and completely design our own program, because hey, why make it easy on ourselves, right?

So for this year, our theme is Book a Trip: Read Around the World, which is actually a theme I used in 2005 with OK success (only OK mostly because of some, um, help that I had designing the program. The next year I went back to doing it myself because the kids threatened an insurrection if I didn't.).

For the Storytime kids (3+), we're reading stories and making crafts from different cultures. For the regular reading program, we're reading...and answering trivia questions for raffle tickets.

For the teens & adults, we're doing a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' kind of thing, where I've given them choices: for this line, either read THIS or THAT. At the end of last year's program, I kind of knew what I wanted to do this year, so I asked people what their favorite and least favorite Bingo Board categories were (for the last few years, teens & adults have done a Reading Bingo. It's a big hit.)

Anyhow, I took their replies and used them to devise my categories for this year from which they'll be choosing what to read. I also added a few that will tie in with the "Around the World" part, which may or may not go over well. In any case, it'll be interesting seeing the different choices that people make. Part of what I like to do to these victims participants is to really stretch their reading habits and preferences. One of the comments that I hear pretty much every year is some variation of, "That wasn't something I ever thought I'd read, but I'm really liking it now."

Pictured here is one of my twists for the Choose Your Own Adventure crew. It's called the Unclaimed Luggage Bin, and has within it various slips of paper. On said pieces of paper, there are different options not found on the regular reading log. Things like: Read a Western; Read a Romance; Read a Fantasy novel; Read a Science Fiction novel; and one of my favorites, Read a book that has a cover that's your favorite color. I set ground rules like "You have the option to draw again if you don't like your first choice, but then you MUST take your second choice." and "If you get a category that you really can't stand, talk to Lisa. She will find you a book that will meet the requirements and that you'll probably like." (And if they don't like it, that's OK too. We'll figure out something.)

This is the season where I really earn my paycheck AND put all those things I learned during my seemingly endless quest for my MLIS, that's for sure.
But, it's fun, and definitely something that I know our patrons look forward to doing during their summers when they could be doing something else.