About the Club

Fire Up your Imagination! Quest for Dragons

This summer will be hot! Over 260,000 children will be reading books and having fun with them in answer to a resounding invitation to: "Fire up your imagination!" The TD Summer Reading Club is offering kids who have just gotten out of school a fun-filled vacation with games and readings. Each year there is a chosen theme, this year children will embark on a 'Quest for dragons'.

This reading initiative is funded by TD Bank Group www.td.com. It has been around for 5 years already, in English and French, in public libraries throughout Ontario. In 2003, it found a new partner, Library and Archives Canada, whose mandate is to extend the reading club's activities to other provinces and territories in Canada. That is why, for the pilot phase 2004, nine provinces and territories joined the TD Summer Reading Club, including the Newfoundland Provincial Information and Library Resources Board in Stephenville, the Provincial Library Service in Prince Edward Island, the Greater Montreal Public Library, the Regroupement des Centres régionaux de services aux bibliothèques publiques du Québec, the Northwest Territories Public Library Services in Hay River, the Nova Scotia Provincial Library in Halifax, the Calgary Public Library in Alberta, the Yukon Public Library Services in Whitehorse and the Nunavut Public Library Services in Baker Lake. Library and Archives Canada would like to thank all its regional partners who will be implementing this initiative.

The TD Summer Reading Club, An Initiative of Library and Archives Canada aims to help children up to 12 years of age to develop a taste for reading, while encouraging them to retain their schooling and to pick up good reading habits. The Club takes on a pleasurable approach to reading. Participants will receive a poster and an activity booklet filled with word games, riddles and other games related to dragons. This summer reading club endeavours to attract more children and adolescents into public libraries. The public libraries that wish to join the Club are committed to organizing activities such as riddles, reading and drawing contests, mural creations and thematic events or even have authors and illustrators come in. We invite teachers and school principals to become "bookrunners" by distributing TD Summer Reading Club invitations to their students.

Objectives

The Initiative's raison d'être is to support the efforts of public libraries in celebrating children's literature during the summertime. We believe summer reading programs have an impact on children's literacy progress and overall student achievements!

The objectives of the TD Summer Reading Club are as follows:

• Offer free, high quality and practical material to allow libraries to adapt the initiative to their own communities.
• Use an exciting theme to attract children to their local libraries.
• Promote the fun of reading and incorporate summer readings as an important part of family vacation.
• Bridge the schooling gap and strengthen the knowledge gained.

Roles and Responsibilities

TD Bank Group has generously committed to sponsoring this community development initiative for at least two years.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) provides a coordinating, consultative, and evaluating role.

Regional Partners are responsible for the delivery of the materials to public libraries and promoting the initiative's profile on a regional scale.

Public libraries receive the supporting material allowing them to organize activities around the theme and to foster reading skills. In return, libraries are requested to promote the initiative locally and to keep track of their promotional efforts. They must also register the participants and record their reading progress.

Fire-up your Imagination! Kids are invited to share their positive reading experiences.