@ Your Library
May is the time to think about how you want summer to be. I know from personal experience that kids will do better at listening if they have a bit of structure to their days. Yes, they absolutely need unstructured free time, but all day every day and they will quit listening to directions and can lose up to a third of their year’s advancements in learning. So, give them time to roam, be bored and find their own things to do. But an important piece of every day should be reading for 15 – 20 minutes. Reading done at the end of the day, with no screens available can also allow them to sleep better.
Here are a few of the books I might have shared with your kids in the last couple of weeks as I visited classes and talked about summer reading, our special programs, the importance of reading this summer and some great new books. Northwoods Lullaby by Mary Casanova, Bud Finds Her Gift by Robin Wall Kimmerer and The Sweater by Larissa Theule are all sweet stories that would make wonderful bedtime reads alongside the beautiful When Twilight Comes: the animals and plants that bring dawn and dusk to life by Marcie Flinchum Atkins. Laughs can be had with The Great Escape by Deborah Marcero, Pizzasaurus by Tammi Sauer or The Future Book by Mac Barnett.
Discover the world around you and learn what it is like with Pests and Other Friends by Halsey Berryman, The Dirt: Wild Life Under the Soil’s Surface by Lindsey Leigh or The Ocean’s Heart by Jilane Hoffman. Explore history with Revolutionary Mary by Karen Blumenthal or Sole Survivor by Norman Ollestad and Brendan Kiely.
Listen to Wonderbooks like A Boy Called Bat by Elana Arnold or Buffalo Dreamer by Violet Duncan. New readers might have fun with The Tunneler Tunnels in the Tunnel by Michael Rex, The Trouble with Tyrannosaurs by Ian Billings, The Terrible Trio the (not so) superheroes by Swapno Haddow or How to Save an Otter by Kate Messner.
Older kids might enjoy The Moon without Stars by Chanel Miller, Unlikely Tale of Chase and Finnigan by Jasmine Warga, The Ordinary and Extraordinary Auden Greene by Corey Ann Haydu, Growing Home by Beth Ferry or The Lions’ Run by Sara Pennypacker.
And all ages might enjoy these graphic novels like Night Chef by Mika Song, Unfairies by Huw Aaron, The Faraway Forest by Debbie Fong, Under a Fire-Red Sky by Geraldine McCaughrean, North for the Winter by Bobby Podesta, Oasis by Guojing or the new Sidekicks series with two books so far by Dan Santat.
What is read isn’t important, reading is the important thing this summer. So let your kids pick what they read, just make it part of every day.
Summer library hours begin this weekend. Our summer hours will be Monday, Thursday and Friday from 10 am – 6 pm and Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 am – 7pm. We will be closed Saturday and Sunday.