This month, young book lovers may be mixing bats and books.
A spokeswoman for Keep Toronto Reading, Tina Srebotnjak, believes if you can’t bring children to the library, bring it to them.
“We are going to send a storyteller to the ROM so that you can hear a story about bats and a story about dinosaurs and a story about medieval knights and that experience can be enhanced by the Royal Ontario Museum (exhibits),” she said.
Keep Toronto Reading, a Toronto Public Library promotion campaign, plans to send the library out into the community in order to get children and adults more involved and aware.
“(It’s) about offering inventive programming that isn’t just a person with a book,” Srebotnjak said. “We are sending the library into the community.”
When adults go to hear authors read from their books this month, they may also be doing so during a wine tasting event that is designed to bring the culture of the book to the reader.
Srebotnjak hopes that by sending the library into the community, it will bring new children and new adults into the library and inspire them to read more.
While the library hasn’t seen a change in the patrons who come to borrow its books and services, Srebotnjak says the TPL is always interested in attracting younger people to its branches.
Toronto Public Library has also planned “One Book,” the first community-wide read. The City wants citizens to read “Consolation,” by Michael Redhill, and has planned numerous events around the reading.
With the One Book program, Toronto Public Library will bring together journalists, historians and Torontonians to discuss not only the book, but the past and future of Toronto.
Keep Toronto Reading continues at branches of the Toronto Public Library throughout the month of February.
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