SPACE FOR READING: The Summer Reading Challenge. By Penny Dolan

The first of September, already! The shelves of my local children’s library will be filling up again as the six books borrowed for the Summer Reading Challenge are returned by the parents and children.

This year’s theme was SPACE RACE: a not-totally serious celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the first moon landing, and this August I was involved too.

This wasn’t because one of my titles was on an Important List or fitted in with the theme or even doing Summer Events as An Author or some other Activity Provider.

I was there because I was a volunteer SRC helper. I sat behind the table, with boxes of cards close by my elbow and drawers full of stickers at my side, ready for those who’d signed up for this year’s SRC.

Before the holidays even began, I had been trained.

I knew about directing those with lost cards to the library staff desk to renew or even register with the Library Service for the first time.

I knew all about filling in the tiny SRC registration cards, including the need for parents to fill in their own email addresses.

The cards - with their mix of family surnames - also show one of the most important things about the library system. Libraries can be used by anyone in our society and are particularly valued by those who value their children's literacy.

I knew that the SRC asks children to read six books over the holidays, although of course, some read a lot more. 

 

To me, who was once a keen child reader – this half-dozen seemed an undemanding quantity. Why the limit? I wondered. 

 

However, there’s a wider perspective. As all six books can be taken out at once, this puts a greater demand on stock. If the SRC was a Ten Title challenge, just ten eager children might borrow a hundred books, and the library would be bare, especially in these straightened times. About six hundred children sign up for the SRC, so even six-titles, if taken out over one or two library visits, can use a lot of books.

I knew about this year’s folding Space Race Wallet – “We only have one per child so please don’t lose it!” - and the three-step system of stickers. Two books, two books more and then a last two. There are different stickers and different places to position the stickers and small “prizes” for every two books read. 

 

I was soon adept at giving out which sticker when, with encouraging words, but I never quite got the hang of the three-way fold . I handed the wallet back in as tidy a fold as I could.

I also knew that, when completed, each child would be awarded a Summer Reading Challenge medal. This was when I looked at the open SRC “wallet” and the spread where a child will have written, in sets of two, their six titles. Ta da!

I loved looking at their choices and asking them (in as quietly and friendly a way as I could) which titles they’d like best or which they’d enjoyed because I was interested in their books and liked children’s books myself. 

 

I had already seen a media-muttering about one library where this process seemed rather heavy-handed. Oh dear! What I was after was a mood of “isn’t talking about books you’ve read an interesting thing to do?” With plenty of smiles.

The title section also gave me a chance to see the variety of books that children read, to spot the usual favourites and to note that (as in bookshops) parents can dominate choices.

The Summer Reading Challenge is an initiative that can help to widen that knowledge by encouraging children to use the library, and by keeping a focusing on reading, keeping reading out there in the culture as an activity that lots of people do even when they are not within school. 

 

Besides, the books on good and well-funded library shelves can offer a wider variety of books (and therefore a wider variety of writing and literacy) than the current titles on offer in many bookshops.

There were sweet relationship patterns hidden in the pages, such as when a pair of siblings both had the title down because the older read it to the younger in bed at night, or else when a parent had read the book to both of them while they were all away on a caravan holiday.

Then, finally, came the Award when the young reader was presented with a special medal to wear. If they were going on to secondary school, they also got their SRC Certificate. 

This could be a delightfully cheery moment and one I tried to make as grand and “official” as  the child’s personality suggested. Sometimes photographs were posed and taken too! Later, when school holidays are over, the Certificates will go to the school and presented there, perhaps in an assembly.

As a new SRC volunteer, I really enjoyed the times I was able to help this year. I liked meeting the children and families informally, and seeing how the Summer Reading Challenge worked from the not-an-author side.

There's not always a gap to fill: the SRC sessions are popular with young teens who seem very competent and friendly and who can use their volunteering as part of The Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme. 

It’s September now, so SRC is almost over - but I certainly hope to sign up again next year. All in all, having seen the scheme in action, I am very much in favour. Some children do not need it at all as encouragement, some may speed through it lightly and carelessly, but many of the young readers I saw across the other side of the table were certainly involved with reading at a time when there are so many other things available.

Now a quick confession: I did squee a little, though silently, when I spotted one of my own early readers titles being taken out.

And an aside: One of the reasons I already knew about the medals was because, as Chair of the local Friends Group, we’d funded the blue or gold ribbons they hang on. Moreover, I’d also seen another Library volunteer, someone who prefers doing behind- the-scenes tasks. spending her time stringing up – or should it be ribboning up? - every one of those many hundred Summer Reading Challenge medals. What a hero!

Lastly, even a possible personal plan: I might start taking my laptop into the Children’s Library and working there. It was good to spend a couple of hours in such friendly, bookish company and so many familiar names.

Penny Dolan