Taking the Show on the Road

Why are so many public libraries suddenly reaching out to kids who have never participated in summer reading programs? "Because June Cleaver is dead," says Penny Peck, evoking the name of the dutiful, "nonworking" mother of Leave It to Beaver, the popular 1950s sitcom. Now, with so many working moms, says Peck, the head of youth services for the San Leandro (CA) Public Library, many kids spend their days in childcare programs, with little chance of getting to the library. Bringing summer reading programs to childcare and recreation centers, YMCAs, and Boys and Girls Clubs "may be the only way some kids can participate" in summer reading, insists Peck. "It's 2002, not 1952."

Traditional summer reading programs—those in which kids and parents visit the public library every few weeks—continue to flourish in many communities. But in others, librarians have noticed that the number of participants is decreasing. The youth services staff of the Clermont County Public Library (CCPL) in Batavia, OH, for example, noticed that fewer children entering grades K–2 were registering for summer reading. When Tracey Woodward, CCPL's public services assistant, asked other public libraries if they were experiencing a similar drop in participation, four out of five libraries indicated they were. Why? Respondents often "chalked up the drop to working parents and day care kids," says Woodward.

More libraries are running summer reading programs that go where the kids are. "I really feel like I have to take my summer reading program on the road," says Adrienne Furness, a children's librarian at the Maplewood Community Library in Rochester, NY. "Many children in the neighborhood spend their days in programs like the YMCA, and, since they're busy all day, and I do the bulk of my programming during the day, it creates a barrier." Last year Furness received a $550 grant from her Friends of the Library group to purchase crafts materials and prizes (rulers, pencils, kazoos, and yo-yos) for a weekly program at the local Y. Working with up to 100 kids at a time, she registered them for summer reading, presented story and craft sessions, and handed out incentives as part of a summer reading game. Furness says the program was successful at reaching kids who "would never have come in to the library, much less participated in a summer reading program, if I hadn't done this project. Some of the kids who never came to the library before now bug their parents to bring them."

Some librarians might hesitate before bringing summer reading to a preschool program, but not Michael Konnert, an outreach services librarian for Vigo County Public Library (VCPL) in Terre Haute, IN. Konnert says that the key to running a successful summer reading program for preschoolers is having a staff that's enthusiastic about working with young children—plus lots of inexpensive, appealing prizes. Last summer nine preschools with an enrollment of about 260 children participated in VCPL's program. Konnert and a group of trained teen volunteers visited each classroom every two weeks, for a total of four times. They read to the children and did crafts, puppet shows, and other activities. The teachers also read to the children and kept a record of the number of minutes each child was read to. At the end of the program, the children each selected a paperback book, which was theirs to keep. During the summer of 2001, the teachers read to the children, usually in a group, for a total of nearly 600 hours, and the preschoolers received 630 prizes and 247 books. Konnert, who also runs a program with older children and teens in lower-income-area community centers every summer, says VCPL has run the summer reading outreach since 1995. The goal, he says, is to encourage kids to visit the library. "I think we accomplish this goal very nicely," says Konnert.

In Cheyenne, WY, the Laramie County Library System (LCLS) used an older technology—its bookmobile—to meet the very contemporary need of helping mostly Hispanic children whose families live in low-income apartments, far from the library, to participate in the summer reading program. Last summer Judy Norris, LCLS's outreach coordinator, and Susan Parkins, the bookmobile driver, took to the road, presenting crafts, storytimes, and other activities, encouraging kids to borrow books, and registering them for summer reading. "Many kids, especially fourth to sixth graders, had to be coerced to participate initially, but soon became regulars," says LCLS's Children's/Young Adult Services Manager Amelia Shelley. Food coupons from local businesses and cheap toy giveaways—plus the bookmobile staff's enthusiasm—helped persuade the kids to attend. "Our summer reading participation increased 93 percent [because of] the bookmobile this year," says Shelley. The program was so successful that Norris and Parkins have continued programming during the school year at a trailer park and a low-income apartment complex.

The Middleborough Public Library (MPL), which serves a 60-square-mile area in southeastern Massachusetts, reaches out as well. Marilyn Thayer, an MPL children's librarian, set up a series of read-aloud programs at various locations far from the library, but near where many children live. Ocean Spray, a large local employer, donated piles of drink boxes to the program. "Children [attended] who might not have seen a library program otherwise," Thayer says. "I'd pack up my drinks, and drive off to do the program." One week she read ghost stories in a graveyard, near the headstone of a former principal of the neighborhood school. Another week Thayer read to a group of children, many of whom had never been so close to a horse before, at a horse farm. Still another time, she read at a dairy farm.

Teens—particularly hard-to-serve teens—are also the targets of summer outreach programs. Francisca Goldsmith, the teen services coordinator at Berkeley (CA) Public Library, says that when promoting the library's teen summer reading program, "We specifically target English language learners by visiting summer-school ESL classes to promote the program." Berkeley's schools receive children and teens from all over the world, and Goldsmith says that she and other staff "[make] sure that our summer-end party includes no foods that specific religions find inedible."

Naomi Angier, the juvenile justice outreach librarian for Multnomah County Library in Oregon, has been bringing the library's teen summer reading program into the local juvenile facility since 1998. Because she works with a captive audience, running a program for youth in detention is relatively simple. Yet prior to Angier's arrival, these teens had no access to a summer reading program. "We usually give out bookmarks for reading 10 hours and 20 hours—20 hours gets a fancy plastic-covered bookmark—and a magazine for 30 hours of reading," Angier says. "Most of [the teens] receive a magazine within one week because they have so much free time to read [and little else to do]."

"It is so easy to give the majority of your attention and focus to the kids walking into the library building—serving them and asking them questions about what they think summer reading should be like," says Katie O'Dell, the reading promotions coordinator for Multnomah County Library. But the staff knows that only about 23 percent of the county's youth visit the library. "We would like to get that number up to 30 percent in the next few years," says O'Dell. Whether or not your library tracks its summer reading statistics and plots its goals this precisely, it's a good bet that many of the children in your community weren't in your program this past summer. If outreach isn't currently part of your library's summer reading program, it may be time to look closely at your community and see where the children participating in your summer reading program are coming from—and where they aren't.

There are some simple ways to gauge summer reading program participation in your community. You can ask all school-aged participants, when they sign up, the name of the school they'll be attending in September (and be sure to ask about homeschooling). That way, you'll be able to count the number of summer reading participants from each school—and map them out. These numbers can offer insight into which parts of your community you aren't reaching. The second test is simple—when an elementary school class visits your library near the end of the school year, ask the kids if they know whether they'll be coming to the library this summer. If not, where will they be? There's a third "test" that's almost entirely intuitive, but can be convincing, too—the supermarket test. On a day when school's out, take a trip to the nearest supermarket and look closely at the faces of the children and parents you see. How many of them have you seen in your library? If almost all of the faces are unfamiliar, you have work to do.

Librarians who run outreach programs agree that a desire to serve underserved groups of young people is the most important ingredient in starting these programs and making them work. Mary Ann Gilpatrick of Walla Walla (WA) Public Library visits the city's "Summer Recreation in the Parks" programs every summer and works with a local elementary school to bus 200 students, many of them Hispanic, to the library. She knows that outreach programs can also make a job that sometimes feels like a grind seem new again. Gilpatrick says, "I discovered a long time ago that if I wasn't doing outreach I got stale real fast, and more recently learned that institutional coalition building helped keep me from burnout."

Call the directors of the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club, Head Start, and other agencies that work with kids over the summer. Talk to the recreation directors in the parks department, and ask them if they'd welcome a visit from the librarian. Describe your summer program, and how it keeps kids' reading skills sharp while they're not in school. Find out whether the agency staff will support your visits and summer reading program—selling the program director works wonders in this department. If you need to convince your administration that spending time out of the building is a good use of your time, get the numbers in advance—how many children you can work with in x number of visits.

Sometimes organizations will approach your library and ask about partnering. When they do, it's time to make sure you're ready to take advantage of the offer, and to take advantage of opportunities that evolve from it. Theresa Hadley, a youth services librarian for the Whatcom County (WA) Library System (WCLS), says that a member of the Lummi Tribe approached WCLS about collaborating on a grant for library services to underserved populations. WCLS worked with the Lummis and the partnership eventually won a wide-ranging Library Services and Technology grant that gave the Lummi tribal library (not part of WCLS) a children's librarian, and gave WCLS the resources to run a summer reading program at the local school for the children of migrant workers.

"Each week the bookmobile driver and I go out to the school," says Hadley, who runs the outreach program to the migrant children. She spends a total of 40 minutes with each class, Pre-K through fifth grade—15 to 20 minutes in their classroom and the rest of the time on the bookmobile, helping students find books. "While I'm in the class I'm either storytelling, booktalking, reading aloud, or facilitating the summer reading club. The school does the same summer reading club that we are running in our library branches. We modify it a bit for their needs. The teachers get big packets of materials—reading logs, incentives, folders, etc.—and they pretty much run the program. When I come, I ask how they're doing, check their progress, provide reader's advisory, and cheer them on."

It's precisely this kind of cooperation that can benefit both (or many) parties and sweeten the pitch to reluctant administrators. "Since 'community coalitions' is a current buzzword, it's an easy sell," says Gilpatrick. "If you have an administrator who is dead set against the 'library-without-walls' concept, you need to talk them into it, with numbers or allies."

Peck suggests that a librarian who wants to reach out to community agencies—but has a reluctant supervisor to convince—should solicit "requests from the partnering organizations, especially if it would reach a lot of kids (not just a dozen kids at a day care center). It may also be significant, as it was in my case, that the partners served predominantly minority kids, or kids who speak English as a second language and want to learn English—very patriotic in these times—or have other special needs, or who are 'at risk.'" The need is out there, and serving populations that don't use the library can be tough—at least the first time you visit an unfamiliar, noisy site you've never visited before. But reminding these children, their group leaders, and their families about the public library can help spread the message to those who have gone unserved for too long.