Member-only story
Summer Reading Programs Aren’t Just for Kids
Because parents could use some prizes too
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.