Kids' Stuff at the Library: Cosplay, Pool Noodle Games & Hunting for Jewel Fish

More than 1,300 children have already signed up for our summer reading program.

And those kids have already read about 4,500 hours in the last month.

In addition to reading, they also built catapults, met some of Outback Ray's exotic animals and made good use of our karaoke machine.

But they've also done a lot of other cool things that I neglected to post here. (Please forgive me. I've been distracted by the concerts, Little Free Libraries and Cleveland Mafia.)

So allow me to catch up in the most effective fashion -- with photos of awesome kids doing cool stuff.

Who dares challenge Sasori of the Red Sand to a noodle-eating contest?

This is Vince. Vince is awesome for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, Vince is dressed as Sasori of the Red Sand from Naruto. He wore this to the most recent meeting of our Anime Club, the members of which (you may remember) like to get dressed up.

Furthermore, Vince devoured five bowls of Ramen to win one of our noodle-eating contests at the meeting.

The moral: dressing like Sasori gives you powerful, digestive abilities. Also, Vince is awesome.

By the way, teens, if you love anime, our next club meeting is July 27. We'll be making duct tape swords.

Kim Sidorick, our children's services manager, shows a couple of members of our American Girl Book Club how to make a God's eye

Speaking of our clubs, our American Girl Book Club met Julie Albright -- a young girl growing up in the 1970s -- during their most recent meeting last week. They also learned how to make a God's eye.

The club's next meeting is Aug. 7 where the girls will meet Kirsten.

Jared Hines and Manav Malik search for scarabs, jewels and stoned with hieroglyphs in the backyard of the Read House during the library's Dig Into Egypt program.

During our Dig Into Egypt program, kids tried to catch a jewel fish (like in the Graeme Base book, The Jewel Fish of Karnac.)

They started their search by digging for special stones. Then they traded the stones for tools or won them by playing mancala. Finally, the kids used their tools to go fishing.

In hindsight, it was kind of like Legends of the Hidden Temple -- y'know with fewer palace guards and no Olmec.

We have more photos from the Dig Into Egypt program on our Facebook page, if you want to check them out.

You think croquet's tricky with a mallet? Try it with a pool noodle.

Finally, at last week's Fun Day Monday, kids used pool noodles as paintbrushes, croquet mallets and tic-tac-toe game boards. (It's incredible to see how creative children's librarians can be when coming up with games.)

We host Fun Day Monday every Monday at 1 p.m. in the backyard of The Read House, which is next door to our main branch on Mentor Avenue.

You don't have to register your kids for Fun Day Monday. Just come out and play!

We have a lot more fun programs coming this summer -- activities with fairies and dinosaurs and ninjas. (These are separate programs. We don't have a Fairy Ninja Dinosaur Party on the docket, though that sounds pretty incredible.)

Check out our calendar and see what's coming up. I bet you'll find something your kid will love.

I mean, who doesn't like dinosaurs?