The Burlington County Library Summer Reading Program is back this summer with all new themes.
Summer reading programs began in the 1890s as a way to encourage school children to read during their summer vacation, use the library and develop the habit of reading.
Research conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics found that in 1994, 95 percent of public libraries offered summer reading programs for children.
The Pinelands Library in Medford is one of these libraries.
“Many schools require reading. We focus more on encouraging people to read for enjoyment,” Reference Librarian Adam Crockett said.
The program is broken down into three different age groups — children (ages 3–12), teens (ages 13–19) and an adult level (ages 20-plus).
“Our goal is to continue to encourage people to read from the time they’ve first learned to old age,” Crockett said.
The themes for the children’s group this year will be “every hero has a story,” for the teens group it will be “unmask,” and the adult theme will be “escape the ordinary.”
These themes are created by the Collaborative Summer Library Program, an association of states working together to provide high-quality summer reading program materials for children, teens and adults at the lowest cost possible for their public libraries.
The participating systems and states have access to the same artwork, incentives and publicity in addition to an extensive manual of programming and promotional ideas.
Using different guidelines based on the age groups, the program promotes summer reading by giving out prizes for those who meet the criterion.
For every four books read, children ages 3–8 can collect a small prize, a free book or a chance to enter into a drawing for a larger prize by completing a books read prize slip.
Returning your prize slips every time you have read four books allows you to collect another prize.
The same rules apply for children ages 8–12 for every four hours spent reading, as opposed to four books.
Teens will need to spend four or more hours reading books, ebooks, magazines, comic books, graphic novels or listening to recorded books, and also complete a reading log by listing what they read and recording their reading times to meet the prize principle.
Adults may either fill out and hand in the short book review form provided in the Summer Reading packet or complete the online review form.
The review doesn’t need to be formal, just a simple sharing of comments about the book the reader selected.
The kids’ prizes will consist of toys and free books, while the teen and adult prizes will be geared more toward gift cards.
The competitive aspect has lead to this program becoming quite popular.
“We have a couple adults who are average level readers but turn in a lot of reviews,” Crockett said. “They have a friendly competition going on between them.”
The child who reads the most books at the end of the program is also recognized with a plaque put up containing their name.
Surprisingly, in this modern era of children avoiding reading at all costs in the summertime, the program has a large showing each summer.
“It’s crazy to see these kids, young at heart, being so eager to read books,” Crockett said.
For more information on joining the program, visit www.bcls.lib.nj.us/node/3945.
