INDIANAPOLIS — The Indianapolis Public Library’s 101st Summer Reading Program, “Imagine Your Story,” attracted 12,477 children and families during the nine-week program that ended on August 1. Young readers devoted 97,209 hours to enhancing their literacy skills and experiencing the joy of reading while earning a variety of prizes generously donated by community sponsors. This year’s Presenting Sponsor was the Indianapolis Indians.
This year’s program broke with past tradition by asking participants to keep track of the amount of time spent reading instead of the number of books read. Prizes such as books, backpacks, and passes to movies, parks and amusement venues were awarded at one-hour, five-hour and 10-hour levels of achievement. There were 7,762 children who completed the 10-hour reading goal.
The program also saw participants complete a combined 18,114 fun and educational activities that entered them into drawings for special prizes, including bicycles awarded to a lucky winner at each of the Library’s 23 locations courtesy of Meijer. All registered summer readers also were automatically registered to win a CollegeChoice529 savings account. Winners of these special prizes will be announced later this summer.
By encouraging family involvement, the Summer Reading Program allowed younger children unable to read to have their parents, siblings or caregivers read aloud to them to log reading minutes and earn prizes. Older children could log minutes for themselves by reading to younger ones.
Also new in 2020, IndyPL’s summer of fun included more than 120 live and recorded virtual storytimes, art programs, magic shows, live animal demonstrations, and more.
The Summer Reading Program was presented by Friends of the Library through gifts to The Indianapolis Public Library Foundation.
To discover the Library’s many activities for children, including upcoming virtual programming, visit indypl.org or the Library’s Facebook and YouTube pages.
