INDIANAPOLIS — It’s not too late for children and families to experience the joy of reading by participating in The Indianapolis Public Library’s 101st Summer Reading Program, “Imagine Your Story,” which continues at through August 1. The program’s Presenting Sponsor is the Indianapolis Indians.
This year’s program allows participants to track the amount of time spent reading, instead of the number of books read, and earn prizes generously donated by community sponsors. Prizes are awarded at one-hour, five-hour and 10-hour levels of achievement.
At the halfway point of this year’s program, 9,794 summer readers already have logged nearly 57,000 hours of reading, and 4,411 children have completed the 10-hour reading goal.
Participants can choose their own adventures by reading library books, books from home, e-books, magazines, graphic novels, or listening to audiobooks. By using the online tracking tool Beanstack, participants or their parents can register and report reading progress. It can be found at indypl.beanstack.org or by searching in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Those who prefer to track their reading activity on paper may call their local IndyPL branch to register, report and redeem prizes.
Younger children unable to read can have parents, siblings or caregivers read aloud to them to log their reading minutes and earn prizes. Older children may log minutes for themselves by reading to younger ones.
In addition to choosing such prizes as books, drawstring backpacks and tickets to Indianapolis Indians games for meeting reading milestones, participants can complete any of a number of fun and educational activities and enter into drawings for special prizes. These include bicycles awarded to a lucky winner at each of the Library’s 23 sites courtesy of Meijer. Also, all participants will automatically be entered to win a CollegeChoice529 savings account.
Educational activities, virtual programs, and creative ideas for parents are shared weekly on the Library’s blog, which can be found at indypl.org/blog.
