The Jefferson Public Library Youth Services Department is encouraging kids to read throughout December.

Youth Services Librarian Bailey Mount says to incentivize youth to check out and read books is with the Winter Wonderland Reading Challenge. She points out every time a child returns a book that they’ve checked out this month, the staff would build onto a snowman.

“We have bought, some people might deem an excessive amount of cotton balls but I think it’s perfectly the right amount, and we have actually started building two competing snowmen. So one is the snowman that is being built that is being built if you return winter, Christmas, Hanukkah, hibernation, snow, anything that goes with like winter themes, and the other snowman is any other books that you’re returning.”     

Mount explains why she is excited to have this fun contest.

“We’ve got two weeks for Christmas break coming up (and) people might not be thinking, ‘Hey let’s go to the library, let’s use the library. And I feel like those snowmen are just going to be a great example of, ‘Hey there’s actually a lot of people that are coming in and still using it, still checking out these resources,’ things like that.”

Mount urges youth to continue to check out books and enjoy reading through the holiday season.