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06/12/2018 02:00 PM

Chester Library Unveils New Summer Reading (and Rocking) Programs


The Chester Library’s new children’s librarian, Trish Guccione, is supporting children from preschool to high school to keep up their reading over the summer break with a new Library Rocks program.

“It’s a big event this year. We want to kick it up a notch and put Chester Library on the map to let parents and families know that we’re here for them and we have new programming going on,” said Guccione.

The program will run from Saturday, June 23 to Saturday, Aug. 18 and will encourage children to keep track of the number of books they read during that time on official reading logs that will be available at the Summer Kick-Off event on June 23.

There will be a total of four Swingin’ Saturday events taking place at the library over the summer. Each will feature different musical guests including Sunny Train, Martha Herrle of The Community School, Music with Margie, and Jonathan of Corner Music.

Children can pick up a raffle ticket each time they attend one of these events, as well as each time they check out a book at the library. The winner of the raffle, taking place at the last Swingin’ Saturday event, will take home a $25 Amazon gift card.

There will also be prizes, courtesy of the Chester Public Library, for three different grade groups—preschool, middle school, and high school—who hand in their filled out logs.

“Our prizes this year are awesome,” said Guccione.

The preschool prize is a ukulele with a tuner and lesson book with CD, the middle school prize is a pair of Skull Candy Bluetooth headphones, and the high school prize is an Echo Dot.

Guccione said Library Director Stephanie Romano “does an incredible job with getting new material and new books for adults and kids.”

The goal of this Library Rocks program is to keep students reading even when school is not in session.

There’s “something called the summer slide where kids who don’t read over the summer lose a lot of their literacy skills,” Guccione said, so the library is trying to “help prevent that for our kiddos.”

For more information on Library Rocks and the Swingin’ Saturday events, visit chesterct.org/library.