Reach for the Stars!

Dunedin Public Libraries Summer Reading Programme

Our popular annual children's Summer Reading Programme starts on 12th December 2015, when Mission Control opens at your local Dunedin Public Library. We’ll be signing on young Space Cadets who are up for the challenge of achieving their reading goal for the summer and a chance to win some great prizes.

As well as the reading challenge, this year we have again teamed up with our two mission partners, University Book Shop Otago and Otago Museum, who invite members of the Summer Reading Programme to visit their space stations over the holidays, and boldly go where no reader has gone before. You can spend a day travelling to new worlds and making new discoveries at the University Book Shop's Children's Room and the Museum's Perpetual Guardian Planetarium, and if you take your Library Summer Reading Programme booklet along with you and complete the additional Museum and Book Shop challenges you’ll be in for some extra goodies.

Otago Museum is pleased to be involved with the Summer Reading Programme again. Suzanne Caulton, Programmes and Events Officer at the Museum, says the philosophy behind the Reading Programme fits well with what the Museum wants to achieve for youngsters. “It’s not about learning outcomes, it’s about exposing children to new things. That’s how children learn. We don’t want young people to feel like they’re doing summer school. This is really just a fun thing to do. They come to the Museum to have a good time.” Her colleague, Rachel Cooper, the Museum’s Public Engagement Manager, agrees. “At the Museum, just as with reading stories, children become the leader of their own adventure,” She says. “Books come to life at the museum”.

University Book Shop Otago has worked with Dunedin Public Libraries in several ways over the years to promote and encourage the joys of reading, writing and being read to. Manager Phillippa Duffy is passionate about promoting the love of books and reading to children. “Now that Dunedin is an official UNESCO City of Literature we are very pleased to keep sponsoring and taking part in Dunedin Public Libraries’ Summer Reading Programme!” she says. “The Summer Reading Programme recognizes the importance to pre/school children of maintaining reading for knowledge and pleasure over the long Summer holidays.”

All three partners are enjoying the way the Summer Reading Programme is enabling them to work together with a common aim. Bookseller, Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb says, ”we are excited about working with the Library and our friends across the road at the Otago Museum: bookshops, libraries and museums are all full of fascinating (arti)facts and delightful discoveries. They are great places to (re)discover the magic of childhood and Reach for the Stars! We look forward to seeing all the space cadets at the Bookshop, and wish each and every one of them the best of luck. Ready, set - read!”

Reach for the Stars: Saturday 12 December 2015 - Sunday 31 January 2016.

Sign up at your local Dunedin Public Library to receive your fun-filled activity booklet and reading log. See www.dunedinlibraries.govt.nz/events/summer-reading-programme for more information.