Community

Success of Summer Reading Challenge

Published: 05 Feb 2021 3:36pm

Wagga Wagga City Library’s Summer Reading Challenge saw children swapping screens for books over the holidays, to the delight of many parents and carers.

As part of the reading challenge, school-aged children were encouraged to read 10 hours across the month of January, based on the gold standard of 20 minutes a day. Children who achieved the 10 hours could then enter a draw to win one of 5 double movie passes.

The challenge saw over 100 participants reading regularly across the holidays, visiting the library to pick up their registration kits, completing the extra activities for virtual badges and mini-prizes, and writing book reviews for their peers.

Manager Library Services Claire Campbell said that matching the success of the COVID-safe holiday programs ‘The Little Wave’ and ‘Make at Home: Bee Gardens’ was a priority.

“We wanted to make sure we had something extra fun planned for the big summer break,” Ms Campbell said.

“With the new Beanstack platform, we’re able to provide online reading challenges for all ages.

“The platform is a fun way for children to log their reading. They get virtual badges for reaching reading goals or completing extra activities we might set – for example, some of the activities involved coming to the library to find a code word, or writing a review for any book they’re reading.

“It was fantastic to see so much engagement with our young book lovers. We’ll have new challenges every school holidays as well as separate challenges for adults and teenagers.

“We also have an ongoing challenge for pre-schoolers, 1000 Books before Kindergarten, which is always available.”

The Summer Reading Challenge five double movie passes were won by Pippa (11 years), Evie (9 years), Addison (9 years), Cate (12 years) and Riley (5 years).