by Ingrid Mattson

Orcas Library director

Thanks to the Funhouse and Facilitators Griselda Cruz, Marisela Medina, Trillium Swanson, Delmy Sanchez and Librarian Jenny DeGroot and our participating families for making the 2024 bilingual Prime Time Family Reading Program such a huge success!

Twenty island families participated in this six-week program sharing meals, stories and discussions together based on universal humanities themes of identity, fairness, acceptance, community and friendship. The stories were read in both English and Spanish, and the program facilitators modeled that reading is fun and easy and encouraged families to have conversations about the books they read.

“This program is important to the community because it encourages a love for reading. Really no one ever told me that I needed to do these things with my child. This program shows people how we can do these things as a family,” said facilitator Griselda Cruz. “This program is important to me because we can strengthen in the children a passion for reading. Reading is so important because it can show us things we don’t know. I also see that times are changing; the more education my children have the more doors will open for them, added Facilitator Marisela Medina.

Orcas Island Public Library is grateful to Trillium, Griselda, Marisela, and Delmy for making this bilingual experience a huge success. We also appreciate Island Market’s generous donation to support meals for one of the night’s programming, and donors for the Winter OICF Give Orcas Campaign who made it possible for us to give Spanish and bilingual books to the families that participated. Prime Time Reading is also made possible through a grant from Humanities Washington, and the Library is proud to have participated in this program with Island families for several years.