Kenny Lake Library Book Camp

Kenny Lake

Sep 29

KLPL News Release

The Kenny Lake Public Library hosted its annual Book Camp for children aged 7-12 on July 11-15. Twenty-three young readers joined for a fun week of reading, crafts, games, music and friendship. This year’s theme, Off the Beaten Path, brought us outside to explore the natural world, investigate new things, strengthen our love of reading and keep curious minds active.

We would like to thank our generous sponsors: the Copper Basin Lions Club, Alyeska, Mary Odden for her writing classes, Robin Mayo with Wrangell Institute for Science and Environment, Mr. Feathers with BLM, Bruce Rogers and Greg Parrish for bringing music and fun to the library, and Wenger’s Country Store. Thank you to librarians Felicia Riedel and Judith Lorenz for organizing this event with the help of awesome Junior Counselors: Monica and Andrew Bryan, Koiana and Killian Cooley.

We’ve been privileged this year to be awarded a special grant from the Juneau Community Foundation’s Book Hook grant. The entire grant was dedicated to our young readers. We’ve been able to focus on three categories where our collection needed some extra material: children’s picture books, beginning readers’ books as well as juvenile audio- books. With an extra $1,000 to spend, this grant allowed us to more than double our budget in those categories and greatly renew and enlarge our collection.

We believe children’s picture books to be a window to the world for young children and the most wonderful thing you can offer your child to nurture his/her curiosity and imagination. Besides the fact that nothing beats cuddling under a blanket with your kids and a great read aloud book!

Offering a variety of good beginning readers’ books is just as important to trigger a lifelong love for reading. As for juvenile audiobooks, they are the best way to keep children entertained during a long drive, rainy or cold days and can be listened to just about anywhere and anytime, even while building with Legos, coloring, making puzzles, etc. Audiobooks enhance children’s attention span, imagination, vocabulary and will beat watching TV by 100%!

We invite all parents and children to stop by during open hours and check out our new collection.

The Juneau Community Foundation will be offering the Book Hook grant again this fall and encourages all small rural Alaskan libraries to apply. We are grateful for their support.