Adopting great reading habits

The Center's two resident foxes look on as librarian Susan Ballard presents a check for their adoption to Dave Wolf, Director of Wildlife.

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Like the buzzards over Hinckley or the swallows returning to Capistrano, every year at this time, an extraordinary creature makes its annual pilgrimage to Lake Erie Nature & Science Center. Librarianus Ballardus, also known as Cuyahoga County Public Library children’s librarian Susan Ballard, makes the brave trek from the Bay Village branch to perhaps be photographed with a snake draped about her neck or, as is the case this year, step into the den of a newly-acquired red fox who is as young and as skittish as a group of preschoolers at storytime.

Ballard’s visit coincides with the end of the library’s annual summer reading program, in which participants received a warm and fuzzy incentive to rack up the required number of hours spent reading. In addition to many fantastic prizes offered by CCPL, the Friends of the Bay Village Branch offered to sponsor the library’s participation in Lake Erie Nature & Science Center’s Adopt an Animal program if the summer readers reached their goal of 20,000 hours. 

The branch’s readers once again responded to challenge, far exceeding their target with a final tally of 23,631 hours of reading. In recognition, the Center’s red fox exhibit will be adorned with a sign for the next twelve months proclaiming “Proudly Adopted by The Friends of The Bay Village Library – 2012 Summer Reading Program.”  

“Readers at our branch had the highest number of summer reading hours of all of the CCPL branches,” said Ballard. “The Adopt an Animal program is the single best incentive I’ve seen to get kids to read.”

Adopt an Animal allows wildlife lovers to support the care of an animal on exhibit and used in Lake Erie Nature & Science Center’s educational programs. Sponsorships are available for a wide variety of furry, finned and feathered friends from between $5 and $25 per month. “Adopted” animals reside at the Center and are on view to the public daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Full details can be found at www.lensc.org.