We have lift off!

A sleek silver rocket glints on its launch pad. The crowd anticipates hearing the roar of takeoff and seeing the beautiful trail of white smoke marking the rocket’s progress into the atmosphere. The countdown begins: “five … four …  three … two … One! The wait is over and the rocket streaks away on its mission. Unlike many of its bigger counterparts, this rocket isn’t taking off from an air force base or Cape Canaveral, nor is it headed to space to drop off a satellite or convey astronauts, it’s mission is to entertain.  For more than a decade model rockets have been lifting off and touching down on the Orange City soccer fields to the applause of adults, parents and children alike. In fact, between three hundred fifty and four hundred model rockets have taken to the skies since the library began its annual rocket launch night. Tonight, Tuesday – June 30, that tradition continues at 7:00 at the Orange City soccer fields by the community pool.

Launch night has always been entertaining and interactive for families and kids. While library staff load rockets and oversee the launch pads, children press the launch buttons and retrieve the rockets that slowly glide back to earth on their parachutes and streamers. Usually the flights go off with out incident or mishap, but every once in awhile a rocket takes off never to be seen again after being carried away by the wind or from falling into a pond near the golf course. Yet, this year will be even more entertaining as local model airplane enthusiasts will be flying their planes at the start and middle of the program. Between the rockets and the airplanes, it will be an exciting evening of flying.

On a completely different note, the summer reading minutes are adding up. Over 153,964 minutes or 2,566 hours have been read so far! Yellow leads with 40096.5 minutes, purple closely follows with 39887 minutes, green has 37,180 minutes, and blue is still dragging its feet in last place with 36800.5 minutes. Blue and green need to make up some ground and come on stong in the last two weeks of the reading program. We watched as the reading packets were handed out and noticed that blue and green have good readers on their teams, which means it will likely come down to the wire in the last week. We are all excited to see who can claim to be the 2009 summer reading champions!

A Lesson Learned

In the last post about the summer reading program I chided the purple reading team for a slow start, but times and totals have certainly changed. Purple now has a lead on the rest of the teams with 21,859 total minutes, green remains towards the top with 19,587 minutes, yellow has 16551.5 minutes, and blue claims last place at 14,610.5 minutes. The lesson I learned since the last post was to not be hasty in counting teams out. Thus, I won’t say anything about the blue or yellow teams and their totals. I know everyone is reading hard and doing their best to squeeze reading into busy summer schedules. Also, many adults amass minutes and wait until later to turn those in. So if you’re hoarding minutes please turn them in so we can keep the updates as accurate as possible.

The combined hours read as of Monday (6/22) morning is 1210.13. The library staff is looking forward to seeing the new totals by the end of the week because we would like to see the combined reading surpass 3,000 hours. That will be quite a jump from the current total but to be on pace to hit the goal of 8,000 minutes we need a big week.

Thanks for all your efforts so far and keep up the good work! Check back for an update at the end of the week!

The color purple…

Purple. What do you relate to the color purple? What words describe the color purple to you? The most common answer is royalty, wealth, or majesty. Other descriptives are warmth, wisdom, gentleness, and power. In Roman culture, only the emperor and highest dignitaries could wear purple. This was because purple dyes were very rare and hard to obtain, which made purple garments expensive and the perfect color to set apart someone of importance.  In American culture, purple is seen as a sign of valor and sacrifice since members of our armed forces are awarded the Purple Heart if they receive wounds in service of the country.

So why all this talk of purple and its descriptions? Well, as it stands currently, the purple summer reading team is last in minutes and has yet to crack the thousand minute reading mark. At the time of this post, Green team leads with 2,045 minutes, Yellow follows with 1,640, Blue has 1040, and Purple has logged 360 minutes. Since its only the first week of the reading program, purple doesn’t have to be extremely concerned, but the other teams have more than doubled purple’s total. My hope is that Friday and Saturday will bring a change and there are purple readers out there hoarding their first week minutes. However, if that isn’t true, then I’m afraid purple’s long standing tradition as a color of royalty, wisdom, valor, and dignity will be tarnished. Perhaps green will have to be the new purple or even yellow. I guess we’ll see what the future brings.

By the way, the Summer Reading Program is off to a decent start – it’s Thursday and almost 85 hours have been logged. Yet, the pace will need to be quickened in order to reach our goal of 8,000 total hours. So keep up the good work and read hard! The library staff is excited to watch the minutes accumulate and some of us have even picked our favorites to win. In spite of poking fun of purple, it would be exciting to see the team pull ahead and make a match of it. We’ll keep you posted on each team’s minutes and current standings.

You Scream… I Scream…

We all scream for ice cream.!  Shhh, you’re in the library!

This upcoming Monday, June 8th, marks the kickoff of our summer reading program, and we are celebrating with a magic show at 6:30  pm and an ice cream social at 7:30 pm.  The magician, Rick Eugene, will amaze kids and adults alike with his magic act and balloon creations.  Afterwards, everyone can perform magic of their own by making several pails of ice cream disappear, along with numerous toppings.

Since Monday is the kickoff, anyone who wants to participate in the reading program can stop by to sign up and receive all the materials starting in the morning.  Be sure to stop by and pick up the reading program information soon if you can’t get in on Monday.  We are excited to begin counting minutes and keeping track of the leading teams. If you are interested in how your reading team is doing compared to the rest, stop by the library and look at our display behind the counter or ask one of  our summer reading program assistants to show you the  minute by minute up-to-date graph.

We hope to see you soon!

Oh, and by the way, we still need people to bring in candy wrappers and cereal boxes (both clean please) so we can have one of our summer activities.  Your help is appreciated!