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Summer Reading Programs Aren’t Just for Kids

3 min readMay 15, 2025

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Sunglasses sitting on a stack of three books on a table with a beach in the background.
Photo by Link Hoang on Unsplash

When I took my kids to the library to sign up for summer reading a few years ago, the woman behind the counter said, “You know, adults can sign up too.”

I didn’t know. I had been taking my kids to sign up for a few years, but hadn’t realized there was a parallel adult program that many libraries offer. I happily signed up, and my kids and I walked out with our shiny new brochures, ready to check off our daily reading goals.

After I became a parent, books that weren’t telling me how to get a baby to sleep better or whether a grape stuck in a toddler’s nose was an emergency fell by the wayside for me.

While I did manage to read a few books just for fun, my reading pace slowed considerably after becoming a mom, and it mostly felt like something I kept meaning to do.

A few years into parenting, I gained some more pockets of time where I could read for pleasure, but I was often foregoing it to do something more pressing, like beat level 4000 on Candy Crush.

I tried joining a book club for a while, but found I didn’t want to spend the limited reading time I had reading other people’s book selections that I wasn’t very excited about.

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The Parenting Portal
The Parenting Portal

Published in The Parenting Portal

The home of parenting articles written by parents and about parents.

Julie Vick
Julie Vick

Written by Julie Vick

Humor writer and snack-getter. Newsletter with funny stuff and writing tips at: https://julievick.substack.com/

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