Collaborative Rewards: A Supergreat Idea

Thanks to Abby Bussen from Cudahy Family Library for submitting this post!

After my first summer as a children’s librarian last year, I spent all fall and winter thinking: How can I do that better? Inspired by the superhero theme Every Hero Has a Story, I drew three life-size superheroes on white butcher block paper (thanks to the help of a truly ancient opaque projector that sounds like a freight train, but works like a peach). Each stood roughly 5 feet tall and were simple black-and-white line drawings. During school visits, I challenged the children in my community to fill in those drawings to earn a supergreat reward – a party with face painting, icy pops, cookies, window painting, and a superhero training school obstacle course.

Here’s how it worked: For every log the children (ages 0-12) turned in, we added one dot to a superhero. They could turn in one log every week throughout the summer. They received other rewards along the way for filling out their logs (books and coupons for their first return of the month, small prizes for every log they turned in after the first log), but I made sure to tell everyone that if those superheroes weren’t filled in, we would have NO party.

Here’s how we prepped: Aside from the drawing of the heroes, which took a couple hours due to the scale and frankly the tiredness of my arm, all we had to do in preparation for this was to cut out an epic amount of circles in various colors. We made the circles for Hulk slightly bigger than for Superman and Ms. Marvel because he’s just huge.

Will we do this again? Definitely! I’m already considering what color-ins we can use to complement the 2016. All told, it took 1,050 logs to complete all three superheroes, but we had many more logs turned in after Hulk was finished. The elementary-aged kids were particularly motivated by this collaborative reward and several went out of their way to encourage their friends to work harder so we could all have this great party at the end of the summer. The party landed on a rainy day, so we had to cancel the outdoor window painting, but the obstacle course was a hit. In the end, I painted so many smiling faces, I knew we’d made a positive step toward making summer reading a group effort.

Battle of the Books: A Summer Tradition

Submitted by Cary Perzan, Jack Russell Memorial Library, Hartford, WI

Every summer for the past decade, libraries in Washington, Jefferson, and Dodge Counties have come together to participate in a Battle of the Books Tri-County Competition. The premise is simple: teams read ten (10) books selected by a committee of librarians during the fall months to fit the summer theme. Then they compete in a trivia showdown at the Tri-County Competition hosted by one of the participating libraries. Each team gets fourteen questions, one for each round, and must answer with the correct complete title and author for a possible eight (8) points per round. Teams may have the chance to "steal" a bonus five (5) points by writing the correct title on their whiteboards if another team misses its question. Teams can have up to five (5) members comprised of teens in 6th through 12th grades.

Librarians at the table posing the questions.

Teams conferring before the competition begins.

This year it was a neck and neck contest between libraries from Hartford, Horicon, Watertown, West Bend, Waterloo, Whitewater, Fort Atkinson, and Jefferson hosted by the Horicon Public Library! Multiple teams aced every single one of their own questions, so it came down to a couple of steal opportunities to separate "The Methodical Readers" from Hartford at 147 points from the three teams  from Fort Atkinson, Horicon, and Waterloo who tied for second place at 142 points each. The winning team's library gets to showcase a traveling Battle of the Books Champions plaque for the year at their library! The interlibrary  Battle of the Books Competition is a simple, fun summer tradition to bring kids, families, and communities together with (literary) good-natured competitive spirit! We're looking forward to preparing for 2016!

Winning team: The Methodical Readers