Another big summer at Mentor Public Library

Kids (like Hazel here) earned Library Champion signs by reading (or being read to) for 15 hours.

Our Summer Reading Program may be over but the fun isn't done.

You can join us for an End of Summer party from 6 to 8 p.m. this Thursday, Aug. 7, at the Read House, which is next door to our Main Branch on Mentor Avenue.

We'll be hosting a special concert with the Eve 'n Stephen Music Fun Band. They'll be taking the stage at 7 p.m.

Before then, kids can see if they won any of our awesome Summer Reading prizes and perform some of their favorite Mad Science Monday experiments.

Now with more bubbles!

There will also be second-chance raffles where kids can get more fun prizes, but you have to be at our party to win.

This year, we dedicated the summer to science. We built hovercrafts, made lava lamps, blew up pop bottles, learned how to take fingerprints and were visited by one of the NASA scientists who helped make the Mars Rover. (We also learned how to train dragons; but that, admittedly, may not have been scientifically accurate.)

And then we got spooky when we dedicated July to Edgar Allan Poe.

We celebrated all aspects of Poe: his writing; his influence on art and cinema; his groundbreaking work in suspense and detective fiction; his interest in codes and cryptography. It wasn't easy, but we even found an age-appropriate way to introduce Poe to kids.

Zack squeezes the Tell-Tale Heart during our Poe-themed obstacle course.

More children than ever before—1,462, to be exact—signed up for our summer reading program at Mentor Library. And they read or were read to for 17,385 hours. (Also, a record high for us.) And 586 kids earned library champion signs by reading or being read to at least 15 hours this summer.

We also had more than 500 teens and adults sign up for summer reading, and they read more than 3,200 books.

All totaled, it was one of our biggest summer reading programs ever!

Of course, that just means we need to think even bigger next year.

See you at the library!

Kacey and Annalise grab a quick snack after an afternoon of granting wishes yesterday by our Read House.