T-R FILE PHOTO The Marshalltown Public Library recently renamed the 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten reading challenge to Read 1,000 Books Together to promote reading aloud to children even once they surpass kindergarten and begin developing their own reading skills.

The Marshalltown Public Library’s 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten online reading challenge has recently been renamed to Read 1,000 Books Together, and Youth Services Manager Joa LaVille is excited about the change.

When the MPL began to use the online software Beanstack for their reading challenges during the height of the pandemic, they noticed that Beanstack had a ready-made challenge called 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten. It is common at libraries across the country, and as the leaders at the MPL got ready for summer reading, they decided to activate it.

The challenge is as it sounds, and participating families set the goal to read 1,000 books with their child before kindergarten, with different milestones and achievements interspersed throughout. It was ongoing, with no specific start or end dates, other than completing it before the child reached kindergarten, making it different than most MPL reading challenges.

LaVille said the main goal was to build school readiness and to help with children’s brain development, but as she took a closer look, she realized it was maybe a little more challenging than intended. They had some kids age out of the challenge after their family put a lot of effort into it, and LaVille contemplated if that was really the point.

“I just kind of looked at it with a new lens, of like what’s our mission? What are we trying to do with this? And the point is, it’s not a race, it’s not to see how fast you can read 1,000 books and it’s not a competition with other families, it’s just kind of a fun way to set a goal of reading a lot with your kid, and then be able to actually recognize some achievements along the way of reading,” she said.

Because the challenge aims to encourage families to read aloud to their children as much as possible, LaVille said changing it to Read 1,000 Books Together just made the most sense. In addition to the name change, they also pushed the age cap so that kids can participate up until age eight. That way, families who find out about the challenge later can still get involved.

“You don’t stop reading to your child, even when they’re learning how to read themselves. I mean, there’s a lot of wonderful benefits to reading aloud, and I know a lot of families that continue to read aloud way beyond when their child is a very fluent reader, and so, it kind of also recognizes — I think the name change values the benefits of that, that goes way beyond kindergarten,” LaVille said.

The decision to change the challenge was also somewhat influenced by LaVille’s own experiences with trying to do the challenge with her grandchild, who just reached kindergarten this year. When she realized that they weren’t even close to reaching the 1,000-book milestone, she found it to be kind of a letdown.

“It made me think about that, it must feel kind of — I mean, instead of feeling excited about participating, it was almost like I was disappointed that it was taking so long. And I was like, this isn’t the point, the point is not for us to be making people feel like they aren’t living up to some — the point for it is just for it to be fun,” LaVille said. “That was kind of part of why I had the realization, was just sort of being in the shoes of a parent that might be doing it, and kind of seeing it from that standpoint.”

LaVille felt the changes made to the challenge kept all the good parts of it that were already working and took away the negative aspects. The change also doesn’t affect the 386 readers who are already participating, so none of their progress will be lost.

The MPL rewards participants throughout the challenge, with prizes being offered after the 25, 100, 500, 800 and 1,000 book milestones. Once a family reaches the 1,000 book milestone, they also get their picture taken to commemorate their accomplishment.

LaVille also said they are planning to start doing monthly prize drawings for the adults putting the work into the challenge. Once a month, any active participant will have the chance to win a fun prize for the whole family.

“One thing that we’ve wanted to do for a while, is to do something that kind of rewards the whole family, or rewards the adults, because really, you don’t need to reward a child for being read to, because they love it, I mean that is the reward. So we wanted to kind of make a little reward for the parents,” LaVille said.

Thus far, 11 readers have completed the challenge, though LaVille isn’t sure “complete” is exactly the right word. She prefers to think of the end of the challenge as an achievement rather than a completion since parents are always on a journey to help their child develop as a reader.

The challenge does not require readers to read 1,000 different books, as kids often like re-reading the same book many times, so each of those additional read throughs can be counted toward the number. More than one reader from the same family can be signed up for the challenge as well.

To sign up for the Read 1,000 Books Together Challenge, visit https://marshalltownlibrary.beanstack.org/reader365.

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Contact Susanna Meyer

at 641-753-6611 or

meyer@timesrepublican.com.