The youngest ages for this year’s Summer Reading Program with the Jefferson Public Library has also recently ended.

Youth Services Librarian Bailey Mount says there were 63 infant to pre-kindergarten registered participants this year. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio every week in June and July she did a story time at both the Natural Wonders and The Children’s Center, before coming back to the library for the third story time. She appreciates how important having the adults be a part of this program to make it as successful as it was.

“My birth to pre-k parents are some of the most invested, participatory, interactive people that I could ask for. And when their kids get excited, they get excited too, and it’s very much like we all feed off of each other.”  

Mount points out how these younger kids also develop social skills while participating in the Summer Reading Program.

“Kids who didn’t know each other would be like playing with each other and so I think we made a lot of important relationships. And it made it really easy because I was able to do a personalized book suggestion for each one. All the board books that were given to the kids were each hand picked by me because I thought personality-wise this would be the one they’d like the most and the moms seem to really enjoy that.”      

Mount adds the overall infant prize winner was Brooklyn Hayes and she received a “Machines at Work” board book and a Toddler StoryTime Readiness Kit with 60 pieces to help her develop color association, math, beginning literacy, and fine motor skills. The pre-kindergarten winner was Victoria Barron who earned three non-fiction books about tying shoes, brushing teeth and telling time, where different parts of the book could be put together to make a 3-D model of that subject.