Books | Culture & Community | Arts & Culture | New Haven Free Public Library | Literacy
June, Amelia, Inessa, and Liza Alford. Abiba Biao Photos.
June Alford is a graphic novel connoisseur. Already, she’s made her way through Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man and devoured Lincoln Pierce’s Big Nate. She’s read enough of Ann Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club to count it among her favorite books.
So when she heard that there was a reading challenge on the cusp of summer break, she was game.
Saturday afternoon, June was one of dozens to attend the launch of “Level Up at Your Library,” an all-ages, city-wide summer learning challenge meant to boost literacy in a city where many kids still read below grade level. Held at the Ives Main Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library (NHFPL), the launch marked the first in a week of celebrations, each at a different branch of the library.
The challenge runs from May 31 to August 23, around when school resumes for the city’s public schools. This year, the challenge is not limited to reading: librarians have pushed patrons to learn about resources such as seed gardens, Ives Squared's creative makerspace, and the “library of things,” a collection of miscellaneous and nontraditional items like cake pans and board games for patrons to check out.
“Everything is about learning something new and it’s our learning challenge,” said Teen Librarian Emily Raymond, who works at the Ives Main Branch. “It’s not just reading. Reading is just one aspect of a bigger puzzle.”
This year—as in years past—there are three different iterations of the summer learning challenge based on age and developmental ability. One, made for the library’s youngest patrons, asks children to read (or be read to) for 20 minutes a day, for a total of 1,200 minutes (that’s 20 hours) by the end of the summer. The library has included a suggested list of books to get readers started.
To track their reading, participants get a booklet that contains a game board and reading log. For every two hours that they read, they can redeem a small prize by showing their booklet to a librarian at any NHFPL branch. Upon completion of 1200 minutes, kids earn a free book.
Similar to the kids’ learning challenge, teens are also tasked with reading for 1,200 minutes total, but in longer, 40-minute intervals. At the halfway point of the challenge (600 minutes), teens can earn a free book. Twenty hours, meanwhile, gets them a $15 gift card to Atticus Bookstore Café. A new inclusion to this year’s challenge is an optional “book review” segment, in which students can complete a book review to earn a $5 gift card to Ashley’s Ice Cream.
Soma Mitra (in blue) with some pint-sized readers.
Children and teens who complete the challenge also have a chance to enter a raffle and win the grand prize, a tour of the Yale Peabody Museum or Lost In New Haven with an adult. The NHFPL will draw one winner from each age group; participants can earn up to 10 raffle tickets by visiting library branches and completing reading milestones.
There is also an adult version of the challenge, focused on both reading and the NHFPL’s extensive resources. Like the kids’ game board, adults get a game of “READopoly,” a literacy- and resource-themed take on the boardgame Monopoly.
Between the red and purple “reading” tiles on the READopoly gameboard are interactive challenges, meant to push participants toward library resources. Some of these challenges include accessing online resources at the NHFPL website and attending library programs of their choice.
“Our goal is always to keep going, getting more and more involvement,” said Children’s Librarian Soma Mitra. Last year alone, Mitra said, roughly 1,200 children and teens participated in the summer learning challenge across the library’s five branches.
The challenge helps prevent students from experiencing the “summer slide,” which refers to the loss of knowledge students experience during summer break. That slide—particularly in a city still in the midst of a literacy crisis—can impact academic success when students reenter school in the fall.
“Since the schools are closed, I believe this is where the library steps in and helps them to keep their reading skills, to keep them engaged,” Mitra said. It’s not only reading that the library offers, she added, pointing to public programs like STEM and coding workshops that continue over the summer.
Back in the children’s section, June held up a copy of Big Nate: All Work and No Play, a collection that includes two years of Lincoln Pierce’s illustrations of the character. Like her, Nate Wright (the titular Big Nate, who is actually not so big at all) just trying to get through school, with all the excitement and drama that it holds.
When asked, she described reading as transportive—much more than the screens that many young people turn to.
“You might like Netflix at all, but if you read a book, you get to choose how they look like and imagine it in your own head,” she said.