One young participant in this past summer’s Southborough Library Summer Reading Program will win a special prize from the Boston Bruins. The big prize is two tickets to a home game along with high fives from players leaving the locker room.
That game date is very up in the air, since fans haven’t been able to attend pro sports games of late. (The NHL is shooting to start the next season this winter, possibly January, and may phase in audience attendance.)
So, you may ask, why the give away now? For 11 years, the Bruins have partnered with the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, and the Massachusetts Library System on their When You Read, You Score campaign. The program supports Summer Reading programs with prizes. This happens to be the year that the Southborough Library won the program’s Grand Prize.
Two prizes will be raffled off. The game ticket drawing is limited to kids ages 5-7. Kids of all ages who participated can also enter a drawing for a signed Bruins hockey puck.
All entrants must have participated in the Southborough Library’s Summer Reading program which ran from late June to late August. The Library announcement explains:
The child must have registered for the Southborough Library’s Summer Reading Program and participated in some way. This can either be by picking up the weekly activity packets, tracking books on the Beanstack app, emailing the librarian with book totals or photos from Summer Reading activities, or watching the weekly Facebook Live programs.
To enter the drawing:
Send an email with your child’s name and age to Children’s Librarian Kim Ivers at kivers@southboroughma.com before Saturday, November 14, 2020.
All eligible names will be put in a drawing and a winner will be chosen when in-game experiences are able to happen.
In the announcement, the Library Commissioners touted the importance of the Bruins partnership:
“Summer reading is fun, but it’s also an important part of students’ academic success because it helps them avoid the summer slide,” said James Lonergan, MBLC Director. Kids who read just four books over the summer do better on reading comprehension tests in the fall than their peers who read one or no books over the summer. Over 3 million children, teens, and adults have participated in summer reading as part of the When You Read, You Score program. Tuukka Rask, Zdeno Chara, Brad Marchand and other Bruins players also helped libraries develop Favorite Books of the Boston Bruins (available on mass.gov/libraries), a recommended reads list that includes librarians’ picks for the best hockey books.
