Summer reading is about fun

It is summer and the reading is grand! As I told many of the students I visited during my class visits, I don’t really care if they participate in summer reading. If they love reading and don’t want or need to keep track of how much time they spend reading then let them go at it and read.

But summer reading is vital for all children, and in fact all of us. Numerous studies have shown that children who don’t read over the three months of summer vacation will lose at least one grade level of reading ability.

Don’t let those skills vanish, they have worked hard for the last nine months, encourage them to read 30 minutes a day and watch them thrive this fall. The library encourages the kids to read 15 minutes first thing in the day and then find someone to read aloud to them last thing before heading to bed in the evening.

Summer reading is all about fun. Explore different interests, topics or maybe discover a new author. Here are a few to whet yours and their appetites. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again by Frank Cottrell Boyce is a sequel to the classic tale by Ian Fleming. And this time the wonderful, magical, flying engine is in a camper van belonging to the Tooting family.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente is a thrilling tale of adventure, mystery, dragons and royalty. This book seems to dive between fairytales and the modern world with the greatest of ease as September along with Saturday and a book-loving dragon battle an evil Marquess and seek to restore order.

An additional fantasy tale can be found in Toys Come Home by Emily Jenkins. This tale is the ‘early experiences of an intelligent stingray, a brave buffalo, and a brand-new someone called Plastic.’

May B by Caroline Starr Rose is a heavy, but fascinating tale of a young girl, sent to work as a maid on the prairies by her destitute parents, only to be abandoned by the homesteader when his wife heads east.

The library has also added all the titles in the Warrior Cat series by Erin Hunter and replenished our Babymouse books so we have all of them again. Both series are great fun and make great summer reading.

And for those who prefer to read non-fiction we have Can You Survive the Titanic? by Allison Lassieur, an interactive survival adventure with 20 different possible endings. Wheels of Change by Sue Macy. This book is subtitled ‘how women rode the bicycle to freedom (with a few flat tires along the way.)’ And for the animal lover, Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World by Sy Montgomery is a fascinating, engaging story.