Welcome to BC Summer Reading Club 2022: All Together Now

On behalf of the British Columbia Library Association, we are absolutely thrilled to be sharing details about this year’s BC Summer Reading Club. Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge that BC Summer Reading Club is made possible by the generous assistance of Public Libraries Branch, Ministry of Municipal Affairs, and CUPE BC.

As voted by library staff across the province, the 2022 theme is All Together Now! We had the pleasure to work with Vancouver-based artist and illustrator, Elaine Chen, who perfectly captured the theme’s spirit in her beautiful artwork for this year’s SRC. Elaine took inspiration for this year’s art from a personal heartfelt gift from a friend – a quilt. Her artwork and characters illustrate the different ways children can experience connection in this world. If you look really closely at this year’s artwork, you might find an homage to last year’s artwork by Zoe Si.

Hybrid Program

BC SRC is proud to be an inclusive and accessible program for children and their families across the province. We plan to continue to build our hybrid program by providing flexible participation options for children to connect with the program in-person and online.

Earlier this year, BC SRC was able to connect with libraries to better understand how we can make improvements to our current online reading tracker. We’d like to thank all participating libraries for their input and sharing their stories. Our developer is currently working on ways to add some new features and more usability for libraries, including reports and statistics, as well as a way to share a welcome message and events with online users. We cannot wait to share the next iteration with you all, so please stay tuned.

Print Materials

As with previous years, all of our print materials are bilingual. We’ve also included QR codes that link to bcsrc.ca. Print materials are expected to arrive at libraries in early April.

This year’s poster design

The reading record will have a similar design to last year that includes 49 boxes for kids to mark their reading goals. There is also a bonus week if they’d like to continue and/or use up all their stickers. One addition for this year is a section that provides general guidance for how kids can participate in SRC this summer.

This year’s reading record design and stickers

This year’s bookmark designs

Medals

As a part of our commitment to sustainability, we are excited to share that this year’s medals will be recyclable. And for everyone curious about this year’s ribbon colour, we’re going with fuchsia! Medals are anticipated to arrive at libraries in June.

T-shirts, baseball caps, and tattoos

This year’s t-shirts and novelties are now ready to order through Fairware until March 14, 2022.  To order your items, please visit the ordering portal set up by Fairware: https://fairware.commonsku.com/shop/d525e56e-74f7-4e07-baf7-94d1024ae93c

This year’s t-shirt design comes in full colour on a heather royal cotton t-shirt, available in three different sizes/fits  (unisex, women’s, and kids). We also anticipate some more outdoor programming and happy to bring back embroidered baseball caps featuring this year’s logo. Lastly, we have tattoos featuring 2 designs: the logo and honorary 2022 mascot Henry the Cat.   

Like in previous years, t-shirts, baseball caps, tattoos, and extra medals will be made available to order after the deadline. Please note that stock will be limited since we no longer have an office to store materials. If you need to order extra materials, including medals, please email Stephanie ([email protected]) and a link will be sent to you with available stock/quantities.

Weekly Sub-themes

Our lovely co-chairs, Alicia Dobbs and Jennie Castleton, came up with some fantastic weekly sub-themes that encapsulate the spirit of All Together Now:

Manual, Staff Resources, and Annual Survey

We’d like to thank our Content Creators and their libraries for once again creating a fun-filled Manual. The BC SRC Manual is a valued resource that helps support libraries across the province with programming ideas and how to make their SRC inclusive for all participants in their communities. A special thank you to Dr. Tess Prendergast and students from her LIBR 527 class for facilitating and supporting this year’s inclusion review.

BC SRC will be providing online activities this year, including pre-recorded activity videos.

Please note that the Annual Staff survey is due on September 30, 2022 and the survey will be available in early May to review questions

The manual and other staff resources will be ready for staff to view in late March/early April on bcsrc.ca/staff.

BC SRC Conference Session & Training

If you plan to attend this year’s virtual BC Library Conference, be sure to tune into our session All Together Now: What’s new for BC SRC in 2022 on April 21 @ 12:45-1:30pm. We’ll be showcasing the new features on the app and resources for 2022.

Unable to make the conference session? That’s okay, we’ll be providing resources and a quick tour on the website around that time.

Workshops with this year’s artist Elaine Chen

Here are some details if you’d like to book a workshop with Elaine this summer. Please contact elaine directly at [email protected].

• Workshop Title: “Creating Worlds Together”
• Description: Join this year’s BC SRC artist, Elaine Chen, for a one hour drawing workshop where the kids will be prompted to work together to create a world, where perhaps a little magic can happen.
• Cost: $300
• Dates: Please contact Elaine directly to book a date as early as you can. Available July 12th onwards (First two weeks would be virtual-only due to recent travels)
• In-person/virtual: Available for in-person Lower Mainland area and Virtual anywhere.

Volunteer with BC SRC

BC SRC is searching for our next Co-Chair! If you would like to get more involved with BC SRC on a provincial level, please visit the website for more details on how you can apply: https://bcsrc.ca/staff/volunteer/. If you’d like to get involved on a more creative level, we are also looking for content creators.