By NIVA DOROUGH / Community Columnist

Excitement is building as the Westover Public Library kicks off its annual Summer Reading Program. The program begins on Saturday, June 11 with activities, arts and crafts and is scheduled to run four weeks each Thursday thereafter.

Story time will begin Thursday, June 16 from 10 a.m. to noon.

The library is located at 3312 Westover Road, Old U.S. 280, and children of all ages are welcome to attend.

Two of our local teachers will be coordinating activities for the reading program. Sandy Johnson works in the library, and Vickey Bailey teaches in the gifted program, both at Chelsea Park Elementary School.

Sandy, who has been volunteering for several years, said the theme for this summer’s program is “One World, Many Stories.”

They will be telling stories from around the world including Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Children will have the opportunity to make crafts from recycled products that pertain to the story of that day.

The plans are to make drums when studying Africa, and rain sticks when learning about Australia.

Each child will be given a reading log to keep up with the number of books they have completed each week, either read by themselves or their parents and will be rewarded for their reading.

Before or after the sessions each Thursday, the children will have time to explore new books and check them out from the library.

Along with activities mentioned, there will also be a few surprises that we will not mention.

Annette Tyler is the volunteer director of the Westover Public Library and said the reading program has been an important event each summer since the library opened in 2005.

The library is a satellite of the Harrison Regional Library in Columbiana. The library contains more than 4,000 items beginning with an easy section for the younger children who are not yet reading, a juvenile section, youth books and even large print books are available for adults.

Annette said a large variety of subjects are available, including fiction and non-fiction.

If that isn’t enough, books can be requested from any library in Shelby County and brought to the Westover location for convenient pick up and check out.

The standard hours of operation are Monday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m.- 2 p.m. So, if you are looking for some good summer reading material, please check out your local library.

Niva Dorough can be reached at nivasinger@aol.com.