Our summer reading theme for Summer 2023 is “All Together Now”. For the next six weeks, we will be exploring themes of TOGETHERness, in an acrostic using the word “together”.
This week’s theme is Growing, a perfect theme to capture both inner growth as well as nature’s bounty of flora and fauna. There are plenty of resources and programs at the Yonkers Public Library to help get you and your family get into a growth mindset this week.
There are a lot of different ways to grow - plants and animals all have a life cycle, and we all grow and change from childhood into adulthood. Plants in gardens grown with seeds from the YPL Seed Library are blooming. If you’re playing YPL Seed Library Bingo, you can see growth all around your neighborhood from trips to botanical gardens to bird watching. You can see a lot of growth in the world around you if you look for it!
Growth isn’t only about physical changes. Our mental and emotional growth is just as important.
Developing a growth mindset is important to our continuing growth. A growth mindset is the belief that through hard work, self-reflection and the guidance of others that we can continue to grow and develop our skills and talents.
For example, if you decide to try painting for the first time, rather than thinking “I hope I’m good at this” or “This is going to look terrible”, we can approach this with the attitude of “I hope this is fun” or “I hope I learn something new today.” That slight shift in perspective helps you build a more positive outlook that will extend to other aspects of your life.
You can check out our recommended reads for growing from gardening to growth mindsets. Be sure to ask a librarian for other specific recommendations.
If you haven’t already, be sure to log your reading in Beanstack for our summer reading challenge! All ages are welcome to sign up. For every book you log until August 15th, your name will be entered into a drawing for a reader basket. Each library branch will host its own drawings for 1000 Books Before Kindergarten, Children, Teens and Adults. Also worthy of note is that children get small prizes as they read books during the program. Register yourself and your family on Beanstack.
This is a collaboration from A to Z!
Alison Robles is a part-time page at the Crestwood Library. She is an avid reader with a passion for YA lit, historical fiction and fantasy. A Yonkers native, she graduated from Iona University in 2020 with a dual-degree in Marketing and Public Relations. She is pursuing a Masters in Information and Library Science from the University at Buffalo.
Z is the Branch Manager at the Crestwood Library. She has been with YPL for over a decade.