Submitted artwork
An illustration by David Catrow for this year’s summer reading program with the theme, Be Creative at Your Library.

Commentary
By Becky Pearson

Enticing and encouraging children to develop the habit of daily reading is the ultimate goal of the summer reading program at McMinnville Public Library.

The value of summer reading is not lost on educators; research done after school resumes in the fall consistently proves that children who read during the summer recess lose few or no skills.

Every parent wants their child to do well in school, so it’s important for them to read during those three summer months. Even more importantly, democracy is built upon the premise of a literate, well-informed electorate.

Children who do well in school stay in school until they graduate from high school. Then they vote and become participants in their communities.

From a child’s point of view, summer reading is fun, and that’s enough reason for them. Reading acts as a reward for all the studying they’ve done during the school year.

In school, children learn and practice skills that help make them into successful adults. Summer reading programs give them an opportunity to use these skills, and it’s fun. It’s fun to hang out at the library with friends, it’s fun to use language, and it’s fun to receive prizes for reading.

The occasional child needs a bit more convincing that, yes, reading during summer vacation is fun and, no, it is not a fate worse than a week without television. Well, OK, sometimes it’s more than the occasional child!

Enter all the bells and whistles of the summer reading program. The Oregon Legislature, local service clubs and business owners provide the program because they know how important reading is and that kids may need enticement to participate.

This summer, we offer an ultimate reading challenge. If they children read 20 minutes every day, they are rewarded with an ice cream treat, a ticket to a Trailblazer game and an entry into a drawing for an MP3 player. Our hope is that children will enjoy reading every day, all summer long.

Watching a child’s reading skills blossom throughout the summer, often turning a reluctant reader into a child who reads whenever the opportunity presents itself, becomes the real reward for families that participate.

As an added bonus, the following year of school is less of a struggle for the reader.

Of course, library personnel do not want children to become readers only for the sake of reading. They want readers to think about what they have read, evaluate it and be able to act upon it. Evaluating what they read and communicating what they think in a manner that other people can understand is a skill to practice.

This year, the summer reading program offers a new fun way for children to practice these skills. Children can read a book, write a short review, make a video of the review at the library and put it on YouTube. At summer’s end, the video with the most viewers will win the Summer Reading photo contest. The winning child’s prize is a digital camera — rather like Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Reading Rainbow” combined with television’s “American Idol.”

Obviously, the real winner is not just the child who wins the camera but all the kids who have read books, thought about what they read and articulated what they thought.

A little friendly competition can be a fun way to involve groups of children in an activity. All the schools in McMinn-ville compete for what we call a Yammy Award. The school with the most children completing the summer reading program wins. The past two years, Memorial Elementary School has won.

Creating partnerships with local schools makes the summer reading program more successful, as measured by the number of children participating and experiencing less reading-skill loss in the fall.

Library staff would like to thank the staff at public, private and home schools for being such good partners.

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And if you haven’t been to the Children’s Room at the library lately, please come by for a visit. While I loved libraries in the communities where I grew up, I must say that this one is even better.

Guest writer Becky Pearson is children’s program coordinator for McMinnville Public Library, where she has worked for the past five years. She and her husband, Jay, have lived in McMinnville for 32 years. She has a bachelors degree in leisure studies from the University of Illinois.