What the Librarians Did on Summer Vacation

We’ve been hearing a lot about the benefits of reading, so this summer, thanks to a grant from Country Day, the librarians took a dive into the deep end of the research* behind these benefits. We’ve included an infographic here with some of the benefits we learned about.

Does it matter what you’re reading? Well, in some cases, yes. For example reading fiction v. non-fiction can help develop empathy, reading poetry activates the same regions of the brain as music, and it turns out that reading books (versus reading newspapers or magazines) can help us live longer. (We still recommend pairing that with good nutrition and exercise!) Do we still encourage you to read cereal boxes, comics, graphic novels, and your favorite online blog? Of course! Any and all types of reading have benefits, and these materials can help build your stamina for longer reads if you’re hoping to access the benefits only a novel can provide.

Given all the great benefits of reading, we decided to embark on a journey to explore ways we can encourage more reading in our entire Country Day community–students, parents, staffulty, alumni, and board members–so we can all get those benefits. We’re calling it Country Day Reads, and we hope you’ll join us. In the High School we’re encouraging “just 10 minutes more a day;” in the Middle School we’ll have independent reading in advisories every Wednesday; and in Lower School we’ll be reaching out to parents with ways to encourage reading at home. 

Stay tuned for more outreach to our community via newsletters, class pages, and more, with interesting things we learned this summer, or you can check our Country Day Reads Blog for our latest posts giving you ideas to improve your reading habits and increase your reading frequency.

Special thank you to Estelle’s Patisserie for hospitality and fueling us with coffee and treats for our meetings.

_{*Let us know if you’d like to see the larger annotated bibliography we compiled with some of our reading this summer. It includes scholarly articles and studies as well as more accessible articles.} 

Thank you to the librarians of Country Day! Visit the Matthews Library blog Books & Bytes to check out what goes on in the middle and high school library!