By Sonja Plummer-Morgan
“Get Creative @ Your Library” at the Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Library. This program is developed by the American Library Association and offered to libraries nationwide. Summer Reading programs provide an opportunity to encourage children to maintain and expand and maintain their reading skills throughout the summer. Over 75 children registered this year. It is a community program in many ways. Area businesses and volunteers enhanced the incentive to read. TD Bank, for instance, offered each participant a packet and a start-up bank account with $10 if they list 10 books that they read. Presque Isle Pizza Hut also sponsored each child registered with a coupon for a free personal pan pizza. The Portland Sea Dogs offered each child free vouchers for attendance to a number of Sea Dog games. These vouchers were exchanged for free admission tickets provided the child showed their library card and included reduced rates for family attendance.
In addition to this, students had the opportunity to join in the online baseball trivia contest offered by the American Library Association titled “Step Up To The Plate @ Your Library”. Participants researched the answers to a list of questions and were entered into a drawing to win a free trip to Cooperstown and a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame and smaller prizes such as T-shirts, mugs, game tickets etc. of their favorite teams.
Families headed to Bangor also were able to use the Discovery Museum membership pass kept as part of our collection and used by members of the library. The library partnered with the museum and over 20 families have taken advantage of this opportunity. The pass is available to anyone with a library card. This service demonstrates a valuable return on our community’s investment, free admission to the museum.
Summer reading combines reading incentives with special programs that supports a theme. This year, guest speakers and community partners such as patron and Tween Book Club member Emily Brawn and her friends Jordan and Lil, her pet guinea pigs, visited children. Carol Allen of For Paws Grooming offered a lesson in dog obedience.
Other special programs included a visiting Gecko and a “Musical Petting Zoo” with the Morton family where children could hear 50 musical instruments and were encouraged to express a love for music through literature. The children learned the words of Victor Hugo, “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
The summer reading program comes to an end until next year on July 22nd. Concluding the program is a puppet performance and puppet making workshop offered by Beth Brown. For more information about this program or other year-round programs at the library, please contact Sue McPherson Assistant Librarian and Children’s Librarian 764-2571 or e-mail suemc@msln.net.
Sonja Plummer-Morgan is the city of Presque Isle’s library director. She can be reached at 764-2571 or via e-mail at sonjaplummer@presqueisle.lib.me.us.
