Drake Public Library

Seeking Excellence

JeNel Allen-Barth

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3,270 hours

Girl with Summer Reading Program Prize.

Jazzmine with a prize for completing ten hours of reading. Prize donated by Friends of Drake Library.

Girl with a twinkie.

Khloe and her twinkie minion.

Girl with art kit.

Shelby won an art kit for completing the required reading for the Summer Reading Program.

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Every Hero Has a Story! Summer Reading Program 2015 Read!  Listen! Learn!

The library’s summer reading program has come to a close. Since the beginning of June, we’ve turned ourselves into superheroes, created animal hero puppets, shown appreciation for our local fire fighters and veterans, created amazing Lego creations, watched super hero movies and had parties with our American Girl dolls and our pet dogs. We’ve been taught amazing and interesting things by the Blank Park Zoo, Centerville Fire Department, Appanoose County Museum, Honey Creek Resort and the Science Center of Iowa. We’ve read books and won really cool prizes!

 

337 children registered for the summer reading program. If you were lucky enough to be one of the first 100 families to register, you probably have one of our “A Library Hero Lives Here” signs in your yard. 168 children completed the program by reading at least 10 hours for a total of 1,680 hours. There was also 1,590 extra hours read by these participants for a total of 3,270 hours read by our Super Reading Heroes! It has been our record breaking summer, with more participants and the highest completion rate that we’ve ever seen. Way to go kids!

 

Girl with a prize.

Brenda and her prize for completing the 2015 Summer Reading Program.

An amazing fact about our summer reading program is that it is absolutely free to all participants. Our prizes, programs, supplies, snacks and crafts are all paid for by the Friends of the Drake Public Library, local restaurants and volunteers. A big THANK YOU goes out to The Friends of the Drake Public Library, lead by Colene Chebuhar (who also took pictures at our programs – yay!), American Legion, Centerville Fire Department, Hardee’s, Sonic, Subway, Pizza Hut, VFW, and of course, the staff and volunteers here at Drake Public Library. Your donations of money, materials, and your time made this summer great for the children that we serve.

 

So, why do we do this? We do this because we love children, we love books, and we love seeing children excited about reading and learning! We’re beating the “Summer Slide” here by putting books in the hands of children who are on break from school and engaging them in fun learning opportunities.

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Scholastic Book Fair – Hard Work Pays Off!

Our Scholastic Book Fair was held Monday, March 9th through Saturday, March 14th.  After weeks of planning, scheduling volunteers and publicity, we can now say that it was a great success.

This year, our Book Fair was “manned” through a combination of volunteers and employees.  I couldn’t have done it without all of these wonderful people!  Hailey Harbour, Tori Brown, Mindi Blizek, Mike Barth, Julianna Barth, Miles Starr, Jeff Livingston, Shawn Dekker, Dana Moritz, Nicole Cox, Lottie Wilson, Mary Beth Thomas, Lois Hays, Deanna Allen and Winona Whitaker all volunteered their time to set up, work and tear down the fair.  Library Employees Jami Livingston, Beth Burgin, Theresa Liford and Pam Reed also put in time to help the project run smoothly.  Theresa and Pam were especially important in keeping the fair room supervised and assisting volunteers as they came in to work throughout the week.  I am so grateful for all of their help.  Thank you so much!

Now to the results of our efforts!  When you purchase items through the Scholastic Book Fair, the Drake Public Library receives 40% of each purchase in Scholastic Dollars.  At the conclusion of this year’s book fair, we totaled $1,717.41 in sales.  After purchasing what was left from our wish list book selections, this brought our Scholastic Dollars earnings to $579.57!  Speaking of our “wish list selections”, patrons were especially generous this year in purchasing books that I had selected for our wish list and donating them back to us.  31 books were purchased as a donation to us!  More might come back to us through our online book fair that will continue through March 24th. The link is on our website as well as the Drake Public Library and Drake Public Library Kids Facebook pages.   These books came directly to us and they still counted toward our Scholastic Dollars earnings.  Pretty neat!

 

Storytime toddlers

Storytime featuring books from the Scholastic Book Fair.

This year, Scholastic also sent a “gift basket” of free books, valued at $100, for us to use as prizes for our summer reading program.  They also let us pick out any of the leftover posters from the fair display to keep for our library, at no cost.  This is a pretty nice gift from our Scholastic friends.

Scholastic Dollars allow me to purchase books, bookmarks, posters and program supplies through the online resource catalog, at no cost to the library.  Even shipping is free. I have used our Scholastic Dollars to replace damaged books, update Children’s Library decorations and even provide interactive items (like our new hand held white boards and our book character plush dolls) for our program activities.  I also purchased books for our very popular Toddler Time group participants.  Every child that attended Toddler Time during the Book Fair was able to choose a book from the fair display to take home with them for free.  It’s a gift that makes them smile with pride, as they hold their brand new book.  And really, isn’t that what this is all about?  It was a joy to see the excitement that our kids and families have for reading and for supporting the Drake Public Library!

Table full of books

Books donated to the Drake Library by shoppers at the Scholastic Book Fair

 

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Kid’s Library News

Doggie Day 2014 Young boy with beagle at library

Dogs and readers enjoy visting during Doggie Days

As Children’s Librarian for Drake Public Library, one of my favorite jobs is the outreach program.  I visit Zylpha Price group home for disabled adults twice a month to read books to them and color or create crafts.  I visit the Preschool and 3-4 year old classrooms at Kids World Childcare once a month for story time.  I schedule Reading Night events here at the library and visit several classrooms for the Centerville School District throughout the school year.  I have recently begun an outreach relationship with the Parents as Teachers program through our local SIEDA office, doing story times and hosting events for them here at the library on occasion.  I am always excited to attend to these outreach opportunities, getting to know the children of our community and helping them gain an appreciation for reading.

Bright Beginnings Thursday Group

A local preschool group visits with JeNel Allen Barth in the Children’s Library

As we move into the holiday season at the Children’s Department, things are getting busy.  We are looking forward to our American Girl Christmas Tea Party, which has become very popular. I will also be participating in the Breakfast with Santa event, sponsored by I Am Main Street by doing a Story time with the children in attendance.  In January, we will be holding another of our Doggie Days so that the kids can read to our local “celebrity dogs”.

I will continue to host our programs each week throughout the school year.  School Age Story time is on Mondays at 4pm, Toddler Time is on Wednesdays at 11:30am, and Game & Craft Group is on Thursdays at 4pm.  Children are always welcome at these events without needing to pre-register.

American Girl Christmas Tea Group Picture

Pancake Day Queen 2013 Maddison Lange attended our American Girl Tea to talk with the attendees about her Queen experience

I am also eager to chat with our kids about the books that they enjoy reading, books that they need to find for school and books that they would like to see here at the library.  It is through these conversations that I realized how much our Board Book interest and circulation has increased in the last year.  With that in mind, our Director, Jami, and I were inspired to request funding from Friends of the Drake Public Library to purchase $1,000 worth of brand new Board Books and an additional storage display for these new books.  How exciting is that!  The books have started coming in and they are already flying off the shelf!

So, come see me at the Children’s Library for a program, a special event or a book.  It’s a fun place to be and we look forward to meeting you.

JeNel Barth
Children’s Librarian
Drake Public Library