Fun highlights county's
summer reading program

The 2002 St. Louis County Library's summer reading program is much more than just reading. There will be parties, contests and fun events throughout the summer.

Prize incentives will be offered to encourage kids up to 18 years of age to do lots of reading. Among the prizes will be St. Louis Cardinal baseball tickets.

This year's theme is "Mysterious Summer."

As last year, the county's program is divided into two age groupings. One is for kids up to 12 years of age. There's a separate teen program for those up to 18 years. (Kids who are 12 get a choice of participating in either program.)

Kick-off parties for younger kids will be Saturday, June 1, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at three different park locations. The sites are at Faust Park in west county; Kennedy Recreation Complex in south county, and North County Recreation Complex in north county.

Among features at the younger kids' parties will be petting zoos, clowns, balloon sculptors, magic shows, story telling and face painting. Louie and Lucy, the library lion mascots, and O.C. Bee, the Old Country Buffet mascot, will appear.

Ventriloquist Bob May performed in 2001 at various library branches throughout the summer and at the ending party at Headquarters

The teens kick-off will be Friday, May 31, from 6 to 8 p.m. at AMF Strike 'N Spare bowling lanes at 1309 North Lindbergh Blvd. Teens who sign up for the summer reading program get two hours of free "extreme" bowling.

Bianca Roberts is the county's youth services manager. She said the headquarters library and the 18 branches also will have separate kick-off events during the first week in June. Kids can sign up for the summer program at these events.

Branches will have other events during the summer, she said. The reading program lasts until mid-August.

Then, each branch and the headquarters will have separate season-ending parties Saturday, Aug. 17.

(You can check the schedules of all events at the headquarters and branches by logging on to the library's website at www.slcl.lib.mo.us and then click on the Kids Page.)

Over 18,000 kids took part in the 2001 summer program. That included 1,000 teens. The county decided to have a separate teen division last year. Roberts said it was too hard to design one program that covered all ages from birth to 18.

Kids feed the goats at S&S Farms petting zoo. The zoo
was featured at one of the kick-off parties in 2001.

A feature of both programs will be incentive prizes that kids can earn for completing certain reading goals.

When registering for the reading programs, each kid will get a "Mysterious Summer" bookmark, a reading log, a program brochure and a Safe Summer bowling pass. The bowling pass lets each kid bowl one game a week free during the reading program period.

For the younger kids, the incentive programs are divided into three levels. The basic goal is to read for 1,155 minutes during the summer. (That's 19 1/4 hours.) Incentive prizes range from a puzzle bookmark to coupons for a St. Louis Science Center exhibit and a coupon for a free meal at Old Country Buffet.

The incentives for the teen program involve reading three "items" at each incentive level. An item can be a book, magazine or newspaper article. The incentives include a raffle for Cardinals baseball tickets as well as coupons for free food items.

Busy readers can go through the incentive cycle more than once and earn repeat prizes.

One feature of the teens' summer program will be a karoake contest for soloists and duets. Preliminary contests will be held at seven branch libraries. They are Cliff Cave, Grand Glaize, Indian Trails, Natural Bridge, Prairie Commons, Rock Road and Tesson Ferry.

Then, the contest finals will be held at the headquarters library on Friday, Aug. 2.

Other teen special events during the summer include Bookmaking Mania, Macabre Mystery Museum and Teen Trivia Nights.

The two-hour bookmaking workshop shows teens how to make their own artistic books. The mystery workshop shows drawing techniques for creating illustrations. And the trivia nights test your knowledge of things of interest to teens.

Younger kids also will get a chance at Bookmaking Mania. The St. Louis Children's Aquarium will bring various animals to branch libraries. And kids will get a chance to meet a real drug-sniffing police dog. There will also be story-telling, magic shows and fingerprinting demonstrations.

The summer reading programs are co-sponsored by Old Country Buffet, St. Louis Science Center, St. Louis County Parks, North Star, Children's Plus, McDonalds Restaurants, Dairy Queen, AMF Bowling Centers and the St. Louis Cardinals.