Kindly Ever After Adventures focus on tales of cooperation, kindness, empathy

By Gwendolyn Haley, librarian Spokane County Library District

Let your imagination run wild this summer with Page Turner Adventures!

This streaming series for kids ages 4–9 is a mix of live action and animation that brings original stories to life during fantastical adventures. Each adventure in the Kindly Ever After series begins at Page’s mysterious Lighthouse Library, home of her Once Upon a Time Machine. With help from her new assistant Reid Moore and Junior Storyologists from around the world,

By Gwendolyn Haley, Librarian Spokane County Library District

For kids, summer reading is an important activity that helps prevent summer learning loss, also called summer slide. Summer slide happens when kids don’t read over the summer and lose ground with the reading skills gained during the prior school year.

Reading is an especially critical summer activity for children in grades K–3. This is when they are learning to read and working on their vocabulary and literacy skills.

For parents, life can be busy and overwhelming. And at the same time, we want the best for our kids. It turns out that making sure kids are reading over the summer, and that we are reading with them, is the best way to set them up for school success.

For everyone at every age, the benefits of reading include

Page brings to life original tales of cooperation, kindness, empathy, and friendship.

Page is wild about stories and loves encouraging creativity, imagination, curiosity, and reading. So, along with the animated stories, each adventure includes multiple crafts, eBooks, audiobooks, and a downloadable activity book with games, coloring sheets, fun facts, and puzzles.

This series and its activities and crafts inspire young imaginations and encourage kids to explore the library. Because when you read, every day is an adventure!

Each week in July begins a new adventure, and all four are viewable through Thursday, August 31.

Starting Sunday, July 2, experience “Moth & Sloth: Best Friends Forever,” during which they learn what it means to be a true friend. Try out three fun crafts including creating a grassy headed sloth and Moth and Sloth paper plate friends.

“The Great Pizza Contest” is a tasty tale of cooperation and unity better sleep, reduced stress, an increase of general knowledge, better concentration, increased empathy, and improved literacy. Plus, reading is great free entertainment.

You can read books found on our shelves as well as eBooks and audiobooks with our online resources found in our Digital Library (www.scld.org/digitallibrary). For young readers, including those still growing their reading skills, TumbleBook Library is a great online resource with animated picture books with audio narration, early reader chapter books, plus kids’ classic and graphic novels.

Teens can find reading that interests them with TeenBookCloud, including young adult novels, poetry for middle and high school readers, and graphic novels. OverDrive and its Libby app include eBooks and audiobooks for kids, teens, and adults with wonderful, curated booklists to help everyone explore their interests.

Our Online Summer Reading Challenge is for all ages— that starts Sunday, July 9. Try out four different crafting projects including making salt dough and a paper-plate pizza. young children, tweens, teens, and adults. With the Beanstack website or app, you can track your summer reading to earn badges for a chance to win a prize! The summer prize drawings are sponsored by the Library Foundation of Spokane County (www.supportscld.org) and other community partners.

Starting Sunday, June 16, the original fairytale “Bartholemew Huggins & the Kindness Machine,” features a boy who accepts the quest to restore kindness to the kingdom and discovers something unexpected along the way. Crafts for this adventure include pop-up kindness cards and kindness catchers.

On Sunday, July 23, Arthur C. Doyle, a hardboiled Private Fly, faces a tough case involving a pilfered prized pastry in “Fly on the Wall Investigations & the Case of the Empathy Empanada.” Watch him solve the case using his powers of empathy. Plus, the crafts include an empathy mix-up book and climbing spiders.

Page Turner Adventures are available exclusively on Beanstack as part of our “Summer Reading 2023: All Together Now” challenge. Sign up today at www.scld.org/readingchallenge.

Families just need one login to create profiles for each reader and track their reading progress.

The ultimate goal for summer reading is 600 minutes per person, which can be easily achieved by reading 20 minutes a day. For every minute you read, you can help the library reach our county-wide goal of 500,000 minutes of summer reading!

Summer reading continues through August 31. To start tracking your reading and summer activities, sign up at www.scld.org/readingchallenge.

Summer is a great time for kids and adults to read what interests them. Stop by the library if you need help finding a good book, or several. Happy reading!

Beach reads, road-trip audiobooks, and the latest business books… they all count!

Track your reading to earn entries for our summer prize drawings.

Now Through August 31 Get started at www.scld.org/readingchallenge.

www.scld.org