August is one of the quieter times in most parts of the library. You would think we’d have lots of people in during their summer break but actually by August people are either away, or rushing around preparing for a new school year.

We do get plenty of children in though, or as Linda calls them The Child Plague. For a doting mother and grandmother she is pretty cranky about children who aren’t her relatives.

I spent days in early June wrapping up books for our Summer Mystery Reading Challenge with brown paper and coloured string. Each book parcel is labelled with genre, an age range, and a couple of lines to tempt the reader. For every mystery book a child reads they get a lollipop from the big plastic tub and a stamp on their Reading Challenge card. Anybody who gets to five, gets a...

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