Make your own adventures by listing the things on your bucket list! Does it include visiting a museum, special vacation? Share the top five things on your bucket list that you hope to accomplish some day! Or maybe this summer!  Go forward and adventure!

Go for a walk and look for letters of the alphabet all around you! For example, two branches on the ground might form the letter T. The goal is to find the letters without having to move items around to create the letter. Mark off each letter as you find it!

You know that saying “don’t judge a book by its cover”?  Well, no judging here, just fun!

This mission challenges you to recreate your favorite book cover using whatever objects, people, and pets you have around the house and share it with us. 

If you don't have the book with the cover you want to recreate at home, you can browse and borrow books on NPL’s catalog.

Heroes are all around us. We see them on the news, we read books about them, and we watch movies that have our favorite heroes in them.  Some heroes are fictional or make-believe characters such as Superman or Wonder Woman.  Many heroes are actual people.  We  consider fire fighters, doctors, and nurses to be examples of everyday heroes.  Some heroes are animals.  We sometimes hear stories of how a dog saved his family from a fire or some other danger.  You will find people in your own life that you consider to be a hero.  Heroes are everywhere!

Do something nice and show kindness to others! These activities are great ways to show your generosity.

Get your little ones to expand their horizons. This can be accomplished by trying something new or seeing things in a different light. Teach your little ones that you don’t have to travel far to explore new things—wonderment can be found everywhere!

Did you know that reading fiction has been scientifically shown to increase our ability to empathize with others?

Empathize (verb) : to share and understand the feelings of others.

Our goal is to have a selection of books that are mirrors as well as windows for our community.  That means, we hope you see yourselves in some of the stories on our shelves  and we hope some stories offer a view you might not have thought or known about before.

Small gestures make the most difference on a daily basis. It's easy to get so preoccupied with our own lives that we forget about others, but with just one simple act of kindness, we can change the way someone else's day goes, and we can better ourselves and the world in the process. This challenge is designed for you to take the time to do something for someone else — and hopefully they will pay it forward to the next person!

Books can take you around the world and back, even if you're only in your backyard! Show us all the fun and exciting places you read by marking each place you read. Get out and read!

Read the short story below and answer the questions.

Jack, Betty, and Matt love the fall season. They like jumping into the pile of leaves. Jack likes the pretty colors. Betty likes to make a big pile with the leaves. Matt likes to hide in the leaves.

STORYTELLING MISSION (Biography)

“Storytelling offers us the gift of being seen.” 

--Fenton Lutunatabua 

This quote comes from the book How Your Story Sets You Free (2019) a book we purchased to help us explore stories this summer at the library.  (You can borrow it!)

Biographies are non-fiction (true) stories about someone's life written by another person. Autobiographies are stories written by the person who lived it. Memoirs are an individual's memories about a specific time or event in their lives. Let’s jump right in with a few activities to get us imagining our stories. Do one of the activities or all of them, it’s your story!  (Completed Missions are worth 10 points towards your end goal of 1000 points.)

Think reading is just about books?  This summer all reading counts and we’re about to get creative in how we think about reading.    This week’s mission challenges you to re-image the story we tell ourselves about what reading is and who we are as readers.