Fairbanks North Star Borough Library Guys and Gals Read Programs

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2010

The Guys Read Program was created by the Fairbanks North Star Borough Library to encourage boys in 4th grade to read for pleasure and visit their libraries. This program was creating to answer the increasingly disparate reading scores between 4th grade boys and girls. Because many boys do not have male reader role-models, Guys Read succeeds by having teams of men read carefully selected books to the boys during their lunch time. To facilitate classroom-sized audiences, a projector was employed to display pages onto screens. Books are consciously selected to capture the attention of program participants, with multiple copies of these books being placed in the school libraries. Each program concludes with a party in the public library features games and food. In addition to introducing the boys to the features of the library, the program attracts the boys’ parents, who learn of the many new services offered by public libraries, such as online car repair manuals, free DVD and video game rentals and the income tax advice program. Initially started as a three school pilot project in 2007, the Guys Read expanded to 10 schools in 2008. Currently, all 18 public elementary schools in the Fairbanks North Star Borough participate in the program, in addition to being imitated in six other Alaskan communities.