Photo Courtesy of Kalona Public Library Social Media

As the first day of school nears, the Kalona Public Library looks back on a summer full of fun for youth and adults with their summer reading program. This year’s theme was Read, Renew, Repeat, a references to what you can do at your local library with both old favorites, and new titles. Kalona Public Library Director Olivia Kahler tells KCII News she also based that theme on the reduce, reuse, recycle campaign. This year’s program started in the second week of June and covered six weeks of the summer, finishing at the end of July. The program was tailored to different age groups including toddlers, youth, teens and adults with different activities and goals at each level. Kahler shares those goals, and the different events participants took part in that went above and beyond reading. 

Kahler said, “We strive to have a reading program for ages ‘0-100’. We had our toddler-age kiddos, four to five different activities for them to complete with their families, as well as tracking any books that are read to them. Up to age 12, they were supposed to track every half hour that they read, until they got to 50 hours. We had a teen reading log that was a bingo card, as was the adult log. Those had more things to do. Plant something in the garden, use fresh herbs to cook a meal, visit a different library other than your home library, read a graphic novel, find a book with a red cover and read that. We were busy! We had 52 programs scheduled in that six week time period. A movie every Monday, afternoon, story-time every Wednesday with guest readers from the community, toddler-time every Friday morning, a magician, dinosaur guy, an outer space musician, and then for the kids our final program was the Iowa State University insect zoo. They were so cool! They brought probably 35 different species of insect for kids to look at, hold, touch, we got to watch them feed which was disgusting and great. Very good entertainment for kids! For the adults, we held Saturday morning programs.”

Each patron who completed the program received a free book, t-shirt and gift certificates to local businesses. There were also grand prizes drawn at the end with gift baskets for youth donated by the gifts and memorials fund and Girl Scout Troop 3979 with a $50 gift card to a local restaurant given to the adult winner. More than 300 people participated this summer, with 266 registering for the youth program. The finale saw 169 youth hit or exceed their 50 hour reading mark goal, working out to 8,450 hours of reading. The Adult bingo card completion rate was 60% with just under half of teens finishing the program. Kahler also said that Riverside contracts with the Kalona Public Library as their home library, so Mondays they would hold an event at Highland Elementary that included story-time and other reading activities. Their grand finale was a color war with color run powder for the kids. The next program at the Kalona Public Library are fall wellness events. Details are available on the library website.