Every Friday for 8 weeks, kids gather in the Dillingham Public Library for a summer reading program. Each week, there’s a new theme for the kids to explore through reading, crafting, playing and learning. They leave with a snack, a free book, and a mission to read throughout the week.
On a rainy Friday afternoon, six elementary school kids gather around a table in the Dillingham City Library as program leader Suzanne Yingst begins reading. The week’s theme? Special agents. The book? “Agent Llama, double trouble.”
Yingst is the literacy specialist at the middle/high school and has been running the summer literacy program for the past two years. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Education awarded a literacy grant to the Dillingham City School District, which funds the program.
The program has been in existence for over a decade, having been funded by various entities throughout the years. Before this most recent grant, volunteers and library staff ran it with grant money from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
“We offer free books, we offer activities connected to those books,” Yingst said. “It is just a lot of fun. It just promotes reading and getting in love with books and critical thinking and all of that fun stuff.”
The program features a table filled with free special agent-themed books of various reading levels set up in the back of the room. The library has two groups a day: toddlers in the morning and elementary school students in the afternoon. High schoolers are also welcome to participate, although Yingst says they don’t have activities like those for the younger age groups.
The number of program attendees varies from week to week.
“It can be anywhere from five to– last year, we had a group of 20 come in,” Yingst said. “So everybody can come, you don’t have to sign up, you can show up each week whenever you want.”
The program doesn’t end when participants leave for the day.
Sonya Marx is the librarian. She pulls big, black trash bags off of hidden cubbies to reveal an assortment of snacks and trinkets.
“The kids have a reading log, and they read so many minutes. When they fill that log, then they can choose one of the prizes,” Marx said.
In attendance are year-round residents and seasonal families alike.
Rosanne McDonald has two daughters in the program. Her family is in Dillingham this summer for the same reason as many others.
“The salmon,” McDonald said, laughing. “My husband works at what is now Silver Bay, used to be Peter Pan. He’s the fleet manager over there.”
McDonald and her family live in Ohio for most of the year. They have been coming to Bristol Bay for the fishing season since 2015.
She says the reading program gives her kids something stimulating to do during the short fishing season. The reading and crafts are things they look forward to each week.
“I mean, as much as we would love for them to experience the fishing aspect of why we come up here, they are so young and when they were babies it was to find something to do and obviously encourage reading,” McDonald said. “And so bringing them to the library was a way to get out of the house and a different environment than just being at camp.”
Simon Flynn is the pastor at the Moravian Church and has been connected to the summer reading program for nearly 14 years, first as a volunteer running the program for high school-aged kids.
Now, he has kids of his own that he brings. He says reading instills them with an appetite for learning.
“And that never stops. From an early age to the end of their life, they always want to learn more,” Flynn said. “Reading opens up a whole world of imagination and the study of lives different from them. And of course, a lot of fun as well.”
He says the library itself plays a vital role in keeping the community alive.
“Libraries have always signified learning and culture,” Flynn said. “And that's something I see here with the learning program for the kids: we are investing in the next generation for them to learn and to grow and to become better citizens.”
This Friday marks the last day of the summer reading program. After that, the library will resume its weekly story time every Friday at 10:30 a.m. for the remainder of the year.
