By Toni McPherson
Special to the Turnagain Times
More than 85 preschool and grade school-age locals are participating in this year’s Summer Reading Celebration at Scott and Wesley Gerrish Branch Library in Girdwood. According branch director Denise Dargan, the turnout for the Celebration programs for school age kids on Wednesday nights have been extremely high.
Teens and adults have summer reading programs too. Each level of the reading program has prizes for participating, but this year, for the first time, the accumulation of reading minutes supports Anchorage Public Library’s system-wide drive to raise money to feed Max, an orphaned baby seal at the Seward Sea Life Center. The Summer Reading Celebration continues through the end of July and you can sign up any time until it’s over.
According to Denise, the media collection is very popular this summer, with DVDs “pretty much flying off the shelves as quickly as they are returned.” Playaways (spoken books the size of a deck of playing cards—all you need is a AAA battery and earbuds to listen!) are extremely popular this time of year with vacationers taking them along on long car trips, and/or airplane travel. Other popular materials for all ages include: graphic novels, anything Star Wars, and arts and crafts books, she said.
As in the rest of the Municipality, Turnagain Arm locals have been lining up to read Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the sequels this summer. Other favorites among adult readers has been anything by Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, John Sandford, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and Alaskan authors, Sue Henry and Dana Stabenow. The Speculative Fiction and Mystery genres are among the most popular.
The children’s fiction collections are as popular as the adults’. Children, eager to get going on the popular reading program Battle of the Books, are focusing on those titles. Other authors include: Rick Riordan; Mary Pope Osborne, author of The Magic Treehouse series; and Erin Hunter’s Warrior series. Old standards such as Beverley Cleary’s Ramona series, the L. Frank Baum Oz books and The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis, are also on the most likely to be read list.
The most popular summer reads throughout the whole city are:
Adult Fiction
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell
Innocent by Scott Turow
Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
Matterhorn: A Novel of Vietnam by Karl Marlantes
Adult Nonfiction
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth
Young People, including Teens
Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
Blue Bloods series by Melissa De La Cruz
Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer
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Toni McPherson is the Community Relations Coordinator Anchorage Public Library.
