Read some Books, Get some Prizes

So our Summer Reading programs have officially begun! Yay! We are super busy with programs, questions and handing out prizes, but we're loving it.

During the summer, we are always looking for community partners to "back us up" as it were. We've asked several of them to post promotion on their community boards or their store windows, and we also asked many of them for prize donations.

After registering for summer reading, you get a prize every time you read five hours. These prizes are ranging from book bags, to free books, to free stuff at Applebee's, to a ticket to the North Idaho Fair and Rodeo. Once you've read over twenty hours, we are entering participants into a drawing for a Sony Walkman MP3 Player, and probably some of the gift cards that our local businesses were good enough to donate to us.

So, if you like the sound of prizes for reading, check out our website for full information on summer reading for kids, teens, and adults, and visit the awesome places that support you, your library, and reading!

My August in September

Hello again, everyone! This is Nick officially starting the blog postings back up. How were the rest of your summers? Mine was crazy busy but too much fun!

As I mentioned in my last blog post (which was last month, weird) I had a lot of things going on those last couple weeks of summer. That first week of August, I was finishing up my online classes that I was taking through Lewis Clark State College. Even though the fall and spring semesters are going to be easier because I’ve gotten some credits out of the way, I don’t like to do school work in the summer.

The second week of August I was up on Lake Pend Oreille at Inland Northwest Camp. I was one of the game staff, so I got to play games with a bunch of middle schoolers all week. It was a blast!

The third week of August I was supposed to have a surgery done to finish my orthodontic treatment. Turns out that it was actually going to be more expensive than I originally thought, and the insurance didn’t come through on it. Needless to say, I’m still waiting on the surgery.

The fourth week of August I headed off to the North Idaho Fair and Rodeo and then did a Karaoke night the following evening. Although the wind was really kicking, we made some fun cowboy and horse hats and gave away some free stuff. Our Karaoke night also went really well. We had people of all ages singing anything from “Beat it,” to “Life is a Highway.” Way too much fun!

So there is my August in a nutshell, and now on to September! The past week I’ve been getting back into the library groove; moving summer boxes into storage, updating Facebook, sending out emails. A big part of my last week has been getting ready for Teen Read Week, which is a nation wide event put on by the American Library Association every year. I have been a part of the Idaho Coordinating Committee for Teen Read Week, and I’m also entering a contest that the Idaho Commission for Libraries is putting on. The contest is creating a storyboard for a library PSA that talks about TRW. Although I’m not finished with it, I’m thinking it should be pretty cool when it is finished.

Well that’s about everything for now, so have a great weekend and I’ll see you on Wednesday!

TTFN

Hello everyone. How has this first week of August been treating you? I hope well.

As it is a Wednesday, this blog post is supposed to be about a book that I’ve read and now have something to say about. I have a confession to make. I didn’t read a book this week. A few Weekly Updates ago, I mentioned the many things that were keeping me busy over the summer. This week all of these things are kind of coming to a head because I’m getting ready to go to a week long summer camp, and all of these things need to be done before then. For that reason, I didn’t have time to sit down and read a book this week.

I also wanted to explain the lack of blog postings for the next couple of weeks. From August 8th-15th, I will be helping at a church camp that I participated in as a camper, and now I’ll be going back to help as staff. When I get back from the camp, I am going to be gone that next week as well because I’m having a surgery done. So from the 8th through the 21st of August, I will officially be falling off the face of the library world, and so I figured I would let anyone reading my blog know what is going on.

But, just because I’m going to be gone for the next couple of weeks doesn’t mean we aren’t having some fun things at the library. On August 13 from 6-8pm, Whilce Portacio will be coming to the Hayden Library. Whilce is a comic book illustrator that has done work on several different titles, including X-Men, and he will be speaking on how to get into the comic book business. He will also be having an open Q & A period, and if you want an autograph, he’ll be doing that as well. All ages are welcome to come.

The North Idaho Fair and Rodeo is running from August 25th-29th, and the Hayden Library will have a table set up on the 26th from opening til closing. Because the fair is the last week in August, I’m going to be able to make it. We’ve had a chance to do the fair for the past couple of years, and it is always a good turnout and a good time. We have a few different crafts we’ll be doing, and we’d love to see you.

The day after we’re at the fair, we are having a Karaoke night. On August 27 from 5 to 8pm, we are going to be singing along with our favorite tunes, enjoying some refreshments, and awarding Teen summer reading prizes. Todd Alexander, a local KJ (Karaoke Jockey), is coming in for the event, and he has thousands of songs to choose from. Hope you’ll come down for a ridiculous time of singing and having fun.

This is basically the last blog post for a couple of weeks, so I’ll say TTFN (Ta-Ta for now), and have a great rest of your summer.

Awesome Library Partners!

How is this Independence Day Weekend finding you? For the library, it has been another busy week of great programs and fun.
Can you believe that it is one day away from the Fourth of July? I still can't believe how fast June has blown by. Before we know it, it'll be August, and we'll be prepping for our fall programs. Time flies when you are having fun, and when you are really, really busy.
This week at the library, we will be making Gak and a Diet Coke Mentos Geyser at our Monday Ka-Boom Science Experiments program. The program starts at 10:30am and goes to 11:30.
At our Tween Summer Reading program on Tuesday, we will be making Summer Beach Bags using sequence, glitter glue, petals, and all other kinds of awesomeness. This program starts at 11am and goes to noon.
Lastly, we will be having our Open Game Friday where the Wii will be set up, and I'm going to grab our board games and see if we want to play those this week.
I think I need to take this time to thank some of the people that have made some amazing programs happen for us. First of all, I want to thank Tim Boal down at Lightning Comics for partnering with the Hayden Library. He has helped us on three of our programs. The first was a Yu-Gi-Oh training, the next was letting us borrow some games for our Last Friday game night, and the third was for the younger kids and was a Readng with Superman.
The next person to mention is Mark Evans at the CDA School of Woodworking. He donated twenty five wooden boat bodies, and random boat pieces that made some amazing wooden boats. One of the ideas of the program was to see which boats floated and which didn't, and most of them did. The other part of the program was making some awesome boats, and that definitley happened as well.
Another partner is the North Idaho Fair & Rodeo. If anyone eighteen years or younger who is registered for summer reading reads fifteen hours, they will get a free pass to the fair on the opening day. Great stuff!
Lastly, the Texas Roadhouse is partnering with us as well. They are giving a free kids meal to anyone who reads ten hours and is under the age of twelve. Even though this doesn't apply to everyone in our Make Waves program, it is still really cool.
At our last Ka-Boom program, Mr. B (his last name is really hard to spell) programmed Lego NXT robots and brought them in for the tweens to play with. He put a lot of time programming the robots, and creating building instructions for the robots themselves. 
Although some of the programs didn't have a huge turnout, I'm hoping that these are the beginnings of some beautiful friendships. These are just a few of the people that are partnering with us, and I'll tell you about the others as they get closer.
See you on Wednesday for a Book Blurt on Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins, and have a great Independence Day!