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ST. CLAIR SHORES — The St. Clair Shores Public Library has a lot in store for their summer reading program this year, but it will look a little different from prior years.
The theme this year is “Plant a Seed, Read.” It will run from June 29 to Aug. 7 which is only about six weeks as opposed to eight weeks in previous years.
Kathleen Harville, a St. Clair Shores Public Library online resource and reference librarian, and Liz Drewek, a St. Clair Shores Public Library youth services librarian, said due to renovations, they are paring things down.
“We know a lot of people are going to want to come in and just see the space and so we wanted to make it, like Kathleen said, as easy as possible on the staff as well as the public,” Drewek said.
She said they wanted to make sure they aren’t running around trying to do everything at once including programming, giving tours and answering questions.
“We have just scaled everything down a little bit,” Drewek said.
Drewek said they didn’t want to outright cancel the program as it’s their biggest season, it’s enjoyable and it’s good for school age children to keep up their reading.
“We look forward to it every year just like the patrons do,” Drewek said.
The official kickoff event will be on June 29. Harville said the adults will not have the weekly drawings this year due to the uncertainty of where everything will stand.
“To make it as easy as possible, the registration form will be your entry ticket to win a prize and at the very end on Aug. 10, we’ll draw a couple of entry forms for a couple of prizes and that will be it,” Harville said.
Book bingo will also not be available and Harville said they hope to move it to the fall or winter to get residents out of the house.
The registration sheet has to be filled out and completed by Aug. 7 to be eligible for the drawing. It will be available to print on the library’s website and it will be available at the library. Forms will not be available until the kickoff on June 29. Harville also said they will have forms curbside should it be needed by that time.
Drewek said the way they scaled back is by shortening the program to add more buffers for renovations. She said, hopefully, they won’t need it, but they’d rather plan for it. They had multiple plans should others not work out.
“We had so many different scenarios set out,” Drewek said.
Drewek has programming for all ages ready.
“In a perfect world, we’ll be doing six weeks of programming,” Drewek said. “If we’re not quite open when we think we will be, we’ll be adjusting it as we go.”
Drewek said the library has reserved City Council chambers for programming currently and during the summer.
She said they are still going to offer as much as they can. Activity logs, grand prize drawings and much more will be available for children and teens. Take and make activities will not be available this year due to limited space and timing with the renovations.
The Touch-a-Truck event will be held from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 11 in the library parking lot. Drewek said it’s one of their more popular events.
“It’s exhausting, but it’s really a lot of fun to see all the people,” she said.
She said it will also serve as a fun way to reconnect with the community.
“Since it’s in the parking lot, it can happen regardless of renovation,” Drewek said.
Drewek said they love this program, as do the patrons. They get to see people they don’t see during the school year during the program. She said it was never a thought they’d cancel it.
“Regardless of the timeline, regardless of how everything was going to happen, it was always in our minds that summer reading was happening,” Drewek said. “We just weren’t 100% sure what it was going to look like.”
Harville said as the renovation completion date moved, they tried to come up with ways to still have summer reading and make it easier on everyone. She also mentioned the chambers are also still used by city groups, election training and more.
“It is just trying to find spaces and ways to make things work this year,” Harville said.
Activities and programs are still in progress. Check out the library’s website at scsmi.net for upcoming events and information. The library is located at 22500 11 Mile Road. Call (586) 771-9020 for more information.
