“As a school, Nursery to Grade 12, we read for 234,290 minutes in the month of May!” reported librarian Brian Lorenzen. “That’s almost 3,905 hours, or nearly 163 days, or enough time to watch all nine main Star Wars films 189 times!”

On May 1, the Virtual Poly Library challenged students to a schoolwide Read-a-Thon. By the end of the month, Grade 5 read for 94,142 minutes collectively, nearly as many minutes as all of the rest of the school put together. 

“I want to congratulate everyone on reading as much as possible,” said Director of Library Services Allison Bean.
 

Here are the top Middle School readers by grade:

• Grade 5: Rosie Z. ’27 (15,068 minutes)
• Grade 6: Eden G. ’26 (2,968 minutes)
• Grade 7: Selena W. ’25 (9,153 minutes)
• Grade 8: William L.R. ’24 (2,186 minutes)

Lorenzen was not surprised that Grade 5 soared to the top of the reading numbers. “They are an enthusiastic bunch of readers, however they have certainly exceeded any expectations about how much reading they would do,” he said.

For the Read-a-Thon, students logged their reading minutes in a Google form each day. “Remember, all kinds of reading count,” the library staff shared. “Books, newspapers, magazines, even class assignments!” Bean and Lorenzen offered recommendations for leisurely reading throughout May.

The Lower School held their own Read-a-Thon May 26-31. Children enjoyed videos of their favorite teachers reading books throughout the week and a prize went to the readers who logged the most reading minutes in each grade.

The Lower School Read-a-Thon champs are:

• Nursery:  Shayaan M. ‘34
• Pre-K:  Benjamin P. ‘33
• Kindergarten:  John W. ‘32
• Grade 1:  Eren S. ‘31 and Gisu R. ‘31
• Grade 2: Jake M. ‘30 and Hunter Gill ‘30
• Grade 3: Camilla L. ‘29 and Fiona I. ‘29
• Grade 4: Mick W. ‘28 and Tess M. ‘28

“The Lower School has always had a Read-a-Thon headed by librarian Kristen Robb that coincides with their “screen-free week,” said Lorenzen. “We thought that expanding that to the whole school would be a great opportunity to build community and encourage a little more screen-free time during Virtual Poly.”

“Transforming for Virtual Poly was tricky in a lot of ways for us,” Lorenzen added.  “A lot of what we do in the library is working with the physical books we have, and so many of our interactions with students are when they come into our space during their free time at school. Knowing we’d be without those things, we built our Virtual Library page to provide as many of the services that we could in an online setting. Thankfully so much of the scholarly material students rely on for research have been digital for some time now. We’ve also been able to join lessons with teachers to help students who are completing projects for history class, which is always a great experience.”

On June 2, Lorenzen followed through on his promise if students logged more than 150,000 minutes and took a delicious cream pie in the face.