June 13 is the beginning of Sea Turtle Week this summer! Our storytimes feature sea turtles and we have cute crafts to Take and Make that feature turtles. We encourage parents of babies and young children to Read, Write, Talk, Sing and Play every day and have provided some turtle-y fun examples.

That was a terrible pun, but it wasn't on porpoise. 

Yes, it was. 

It's Shark Week at Iredell County Public Libraries!

Silly story time. I don't have cable tv and didn't have cable tv when my boys were small. One of the first times that we took a family vacation to the beach with my younger son, we stayed at a rental house that had cable television and my sons, ages 6 and 11, were glued to the Discovery Channel. And guess what? It was Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. My 6 year old shouted, "what?!?" and came stomping out to berate his parents saying, "you took us to the beach during SHARK WEEK! are you trying to get us killed?!" and it took a long time to calm him down and explain to him that Shark Week was only on the Discovery Channel and not in the Atlantic Ocean. Except now I have made it Shark Week at the library for 2 years in a row. Ha-ha, Michael! Who is 19 now and found this story funny starting at about age 9.

Anyway, Celebrate Shark Week however you choose! 

Shark Week! 

Sharks are fascinating animals and this week we are super excited to focus on all sorts of sharks! 

The Blue Whale is the largest animal known to have ever existed. Wow! If your child is too young to appreciate that fun fact, you can still have fun with Kevin Sherry's book I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean. Spoiler alert: the narrator is not a blue whale, so...

We hope you have had fun reading each day this summer and that you have found a smile in some of our tips for helping your young child develop their pre-reading skills by reading, writing, talking, singing and playing together every day!