Tom Henihan
Express Staff
Children gathered at the McLennan Municipal Library on August 23, to participate in the final get-together of the Summer Reading Club.
The TD Summer Reading Club is a free, bilingual program held at public libraries across Canada. The program encourages kids of all interests and abilities to enjoy activities at their local library and the Reading Club offers access to free books, reading books online, and reading suggestions.
This year’s theme was “Wild” and the activities, books and crafts explored at the club were based on the theme of wildness.
Approximately 20 kids enrolled in the reading club with a few missing the odd season when the family was away camping or doing other summer activities.
On August 23, as it was the last day of the program the kids received their season-end reading prizes for the number of books they read with Nathaniel Reid receiving the prize for most books and best attendance at the club.
“I liked it, it was fun,” Nathaniel said clutching the bag of items he received as a prize.
Lindsay Wells, who finished working on Friday August 23, says she enjoyed her first summer at the library and is returning to Medicine Hat to begin her third year of an education degree.
“I had a great summer and I was so lucky that I got to do this,” says Wells.
Other programs held at the library over the summer were “Ask a Geek,” offering solutions to basic computer problems, Tot Time, which ran for an hour on Wednesday afternoons, Little Bits electronics program and the board game café.
Jessie Benoit from Donnelly, who worked as library manager last year returned to the position again this summer. Benoit finishes work on Friday August 26 and travels to Edmonton immediately afterwards to begin his third year of a Bachelor of Education and Science combined program at the French Campus at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
“It was busier than last year,” says Benoit. “We kept busy moving all of the books and we made more displays.”
During the Olympics, the library did daily and sometimes hourly updates on the games. For two weeks, using a projector, the Olympics were streamed onto the library wall.
An Olympics window displayed offered an account of how we were doing in and was updated every time Canada won a medal.
Benoit says he enjoyed working at McLennan Library that “it’s a fun job,” and he would like to return next season if possible.
