Benson Memorial Library’s summer reading programs ended at the close of July and it was bittersweet! While many members of our staff are excited to get a much
deserved break from the chaos, we are thrilled with the great turnout we had for both adult and children’s programs this summer.

By the end of the program, 236 children from more than 17 different schools (including homeschool and cyberschool) participated! Forty-eight were children under five years old, 132 were kindergarten through fifth grade, and fifty-six were in grades six through twelve.

This summer, Pennsylvania chose to measure children’s reading by number of hours read instead of number of books read. Our children’s librarian designed a gamepiece that included a square for every 15 minutes read and once a child reached an hour, he or she received a prize (each gamepiece included a total of twelve hours). At the end of the program, the total hours read by the children in our community totaled 1,368! We are so proud of our youngsters!

As for our adults, 87 participated in the program and 27 completed an entire gamepiece at least once, which required reading almost 19 books. What an accomplishment! At the end of the program, we also awarded three prizes and one grand-prize to some lucky winners pictured below (Kindle Fire winner not pictured yet, to be updated soon!).

Thank you to all who participated and we can’t wait for more fun in the rest of 2016!