Best Summer Ever! (At least until next summer...)

We handed out a lot of Library Champion signs this year -- 241 of them to be exact.

We've had a busy summer at the Mentor Public Library.

We dug for dinosaurs, made fairy gardens, hosted a half dozen concerts (and still have two more coming,) built catapults, started installing our Little Free Libraries, tested your ninja-ness (ninja-osity?) and learned about everything from the Battle of Gettysburg to Lake Erie shipwrecks to the Cleveland mafia.

Oh, and we're still trying to get the paint out of our clothes from Holi.

And it looks like you've had a busy summer at the library too.

We had 1,440 children sign up for our Dig Into Reading program. They read (or were read to) for a whopping total of 17,364 hours this summer.

Another 434 adults and 209 teens signed up for their respective summer reading programs at the library, as well.

The adults read 2,516 books; the teens, 1,214.

And all of those numbers -- the number of participants and how much they read -- are record highs for Mentor Public Library.

As a point of comparison, kids read about 4,000 hours more than last year's 13,443 hours -- which was, until this year, the most we've ever had. That's right, kids. You topped your best ever by more than 4,000 hours!

This was, in every measurable way, the biggest summer reading program the library has ever had.

We thank you for spending your summer with us and want to invite you to our End of Summer Carnival at the Read House on Thursday, August 15.

There will be games, refreshments and kids will find out if they won any of our grand prizes (which includes, as you may recall, a $100 gift card to Toys "R" Us.)

Also, we can't talk about our summer reading program without thanking all of our generous sponsors. There's no way more than 2,000 people would sign up for summer reading without your support.

By the way, our summer reading program may be over but that doesn't mean the fun or the learning is finished. We still have a lot of cool programs and events slated for the rest of August and all throughout autumn.

You can check them out on our website.

Never stop learning!