Caldwell Summer Reading Program sees record readers

Nearly 1,200 children under the age of 12 across Caldwell County spent their summers with their noses buried between the pages of books, racking up more than 650,000 minutes of reading in the library’s Summer Reading Program — a record amount according to Caldwell Library Director Janet Fore.

“Our kids are reading in this county,” Fore told the county commissioners at their meeting on Aug. 24. “The teens had their highest bookmark return ever, with 108 bookmarks returned.”

Each bookmark, or catalogued reading tracker, represented seven books, meaning teens blew through more than 750 books, with an average time of 30.5 hours spent reading throughout the hottest months of the year.

“Teenagers reading during the summer,” Fore emphasized to the board.

She said in a later interview that many of those books were manga, or Japanese comic books that are read back to front, right to left.

Fore explained that when she started, the manga section only consisted of two shelves at the Lenoir library branch but has now expanded to nearly 16.

“If I have a collection, I have them all,” Fore said, gesturing to a shelf full of “Attack on Titan” books, a popular manga. “If it’s not on the shelf, it just means it’s checked out. Anytime I can get light novels that go with them, I have those too.”

Light novels are short, dialogue-heavy Japanese books written in prose — and Fore hopes they will serve as the bridge that takes teens from manga to fleshed-out fiction.

As students across all ages hit certain quotas, they received prizes such as books and Hickory Crawdads tickets. According to Fore, youth services gave away 1,374 books this year, 524 more than last summer.

SOUTHERN BRANCH LIBRARY

Fore, who started with the library nearly a decade ago, diverted the praise to library staff across all three branches, who lined up events and worked around the hurdles that came up over the course of the summer.

Paired with a rise in visits — a 13.5% increase at the Southern Branch Library in Granite Falls — young adult circulations across the county surged by 12.6% over the summer.

“The day that proved to me that (Southern Branch) was really a youth-centered library was July 3,” Fore told commissioners on Monday, explaining that a heat dome was hovering over the county, and the team considered canceling an outdoor activity but eventually decided to hold it on the shady side of the building.

“Our thought was, ‘Nobody in their right mind’s coming anyway because it’s going to be 100 degrees,’” Fore said. “They had so many teens turn up; they had to turn people away. They ran out of materials. Our youth-centered library has come into its own.”

HUDSON BRANCH

When Fore first entered the role of director six months ago, she was convinced the Hudson branch needed to be torn down — driven by the staff’s concerns that one day they would find the book collections covered in the rubble of a roof collapse.

Much to her relief, the county’s facilities manager and safety officer concluded that although the building needs work, no one was in immediate danger. However, Fore still believes a change of scenery is needed.

The Hudson branch has been in that building since 1973, with the same shelves, walls, outdated bathrooms, and bowing ceiling as when the library first opened.

Now, the library is outgrowing its space, with checkouts for children having increased by 28% and teen checkouts by 12%.

“At one story time in July, they had 26 people show up,” Fore told the board. “I don’t know where they put 26 people in that little, small building.”

Fore said there were a few potential options for the library, chief among them moving across the street to the new shopping complex being built, should the developer be open to considering it.

“We’re ready to turn the page,” Fore said to the commissioners, explaining that the library had accomplished its two goals of surpassing 300,000 checkouts and increasing the programs offered. “The question now is what do we do next? We’re being successful inside those buildings. I really believe we’ve got to start reaching out to our outlying communities.”