SummerQuest Party

So the final days of Summer leak away and Fall shuffles in like a pair of sneakers through a heap of flallen leaves. But let us say farewell to the warm easy days and remember the joys of the long peaceful days of uninterrupted reading. Here at the Library we marked the end of Summer with our annual SummerQuest wrap-up.

Our Questers read a grand total of 352 books this year. 47 kids read at least one book, and most read more. Ten kids read all the way to the finish line, and Questers were still returning books on the last day before the party.

Our top reader (one of our youngest readers at age 4 yrs old) read a staggering 43 books!

At our SummerQuest party naturally we talked a little bit about books. Below you'll find a list of 'Best Books' and 'Worst Books' from our readers. As you would expect the list of Favorite books is far longer than the Un-favorites.

Best Books (and some comments from the kids):
Harry Potter ('especially the fourth one')
Tintin (Tintin and the Picaros is especially noted)
Warriors by Aaron Hunter, (a book about the adventures of cats).
The Princess Tales ('sometimes short is good')
Catwings by Ursula Leguin (adventures of cats who can fly)
The Boxcar Children ('it's neat how they invent stuff to help them')
Cam Jansen (series)
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle ('she's great because she gives advice to parents for when kids do something bad')
Henry & Mudge and the sneaky crackers ('it was hard but I read it all by myself and I finished it')
The Bobbsey Twins series
The Wheel on the School
Swallows and Amazons (series, a mom says: 'a great read-aloud series for ages 4yrs old all the way up')
Captain Underpants and the attack of the boogey monster part 2.
The Saturdays ('Mom liked it too')
Arthur's Underwear (and all the Arthur books)
Understood Betsey
Hope was here
Eragon (a mom says the story is good, but the writer doesn't yet have fully developed skills)
The River (a book about the Amazon rivier, with a section on Piranas)
and a non-fiction book on How to Make a Newspaper (for kids).

Worst books (You will find some books showing up on both lists. I find these are usually interesting books. When people have strong feelings about a book either way you know there's something going on between those covers):

Warriors (one sister liked it, another didn't)
The Monstering
The Princess Tales ('I liked it, but it was too short, I thought it was going to be longer')
Eragon (Parent: 'It read like it was written by a 15-year-old with a thesaurus.' Because, of course, it was).
Shoebag Returns (a book about a cockroach, 'It was boring' but the 'Doll-smasher' was cool).