By SHARON S. LEE
Kitsap Regional Library

POULSBO — It’s true: Adults can be seen reading all over the county this summer.

It may have something to do with the hot weather and a desire to engage minds while relaxing in cool places. It may also have to do with the fact that the library’s Summer Learning Program has expanded beyond engaging children and teens in the act of reading to include adults 18 and older.

This radical step is in response to adult comments and requests made over the years as they brought their young and teen-aged children into the library or onto our website to participate in Summer Learning. Parents and libraries have worked together for years to prevent the “summer slide” in reading and coding skills by fostering an annual program with a minimum standard of 10 hours to keep kids and teens “ready to learn” when school starts in the fall. It seemed, however, that many parents and adults also longed for the opportunity to track their own reading in addition to helping their kids track theirs. We heard your plea and, this year, we are trying it out.

How does it work? Any adult over the age of 18 simply tracks the number of hours read on a tracking form. Once 10 hours is reached, he or she can come into any library to claim a brightly colored button that states, “Reading is My Super Power,” or “Book Nerd,” “BFF: Book Friend Forever,” or “I Read Past My Bedtime,” or, finally, “Fight Evil. Read Books.” Our next step is to encourage adults to come in with their trackers after they have read for 100 hours in order to claim an adult-sized T-shirt in a range of bright colors that sport these same proud statements.

Guess what has happened? We’re almost out of buttons all across the county. Adult Services librarians are negotiating with each other to trade for the color and style preferred by reading adults in their communities. We are not able to keep up with demand.

As of this moment, we still have adult-sized T-shirts in stock and I believe we will meet demand through the end of this month. Once they are gone, however, they are gone.

My personal thanks to all you grownups out there for showing us how much you value reading for your kids, teens, students in the community, and now, for yourselves. At the library this summer, we’re all about inspiring our community to dream more, learn more, do more and be more.

— Sharon S. Lee is manager of the Kitsap Regional Library branch in Poulsbo. Contact her at sslee@krl.org