With summer coming up, the library is doing a Storywalk.
What’s a Storywalk? Children’s librarian Chris Norbury explains. “The Storywalk is a fun way to get people reading in a different way. Traditionally, you’d sit down with a book, you’d open it, you turn page by page, and…you kind of just sit there,” he says. “But a story walk is meant to engage people. You’re moving as you read. The idea is walk along a path, and find the first page. ‘Hey, look at that,’ you say. You read the first page, walk a little bit farther, and read the next one. It adds a physical component to reading. It makes it fun.”
The Storywalk was set up down in the park at Chamberlain starting a couple weeks ago. Over the Canada Day long weekend, someone or a group of people came along and knocked down all the pages, damaging the posts used to hold them up. Norbury says they have more posts, and that it was time to move the story anyway. “The idea is to bring literacy to where children are playing. It’s just another way for us to promote literacy in the community in a fun way.”
The book is part of the TD Summer Reading Club, which is the summer reading program the library is using. “It is a pretty fun book,” he says. “I’ve read it a few times with my daughter, Abigail. It’s called The Darkest Dark, and it follows Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s inspiration on why he became an astronaut. It starts from when he was young and looking into the stars and witnessing the Apollo landing, and how that cemented his desire to go to space and how it actually helped him overcome his fears of the dark.”
Norbury says some kids might find the book helpful in overcoming their fear, too.
The Storywalk will be at various parks over the summer, assuming it doesn’t get damaged again.
Jenny Geary took this picture of the damaged Storywalk signboards.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
