Read to Me, Read to You

For the past three years, I have been a member of the Thousand Oaks Teen Advisory League (TOTAL), which runs the children's summer reading program at the library. Tonight, on January 26th, TOTAL organized the "Read to Me, Read to You" event at the Thousand Oaks Library. Teen volunteers were paired with a child to spend time reading together. Then, each child made a craft, on which they wrote why they love their library. These crafts will be hung in the library to celebrate its 30th anniversary.

Magic Tree House Book Club

It is hard to believe that Friday, December 30th, was the last meeting of the Magic Tree House Book Club. Running this book club over the past 28 weeks has been an amazing experience. I love working with children and enjoyed the book club just as much as they did! I am definitely going to miss everyone, but I am grateful to have been able to share my love of reading with the children.

For those of you who do not know about this book club, we met at the Newbury Park Library and Miller Family YMCA every Friday from 4:30-5:30pm. At each weekly meeting, I summarized one of the Magic Tree House books and asked open-ended discussion questions. This gave the children the opportunity to develop a better understanding of the book by sharing their own ideas and hearing different perspectives. I also planned three crafts, related to each week's book, for the children to make. These activities reinforced the children’s belief that reading is fun, an outlook that I hope they will maintain throughout their lives. This 200+ hour project has been a lot of hard work, but I know in my heart that it was worth every minute if I changed at least one child’s life through reading.

Before saying goodbye at this last meeting, I surprised the children with cake pops that I had baked earlier that day. The children were very excited to take their cake pops home for dessert!