PICKFORD COMMUNITY LIBRARY RANKED NUMBER ONE LIBRARY IN U.S.A. 2018 SCHOLASTIC SUMMER READING CHALLENGE The Pickford Community Library has reason to celebrate! It's the Number One Library in the United States in the 2018 <http://www.scholastic.com/summer> Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. This is the second year Scholastic is recognizing the contributions of libraries and community partners along with schools in the challenge. The Pickford Community Library coordinated and administrated the challenge for Pickford Public Schools, area homeschoolers, and participants from other Eastern Upper Peninsula schools. 152 area students read 338,057 minutes from May 7 to September 7. In addition, the local community provided outstanding support for the library's "piggyback rewards program" in which students earned in-house prizes all summer long. The Pickford Community Library will be featured in 2019 Scholastic Book of World Records for this nationwide honor and will receive a commemorative plaque and a celebration kit to recognize student reading achievements. This past summer, 509,867 students from all 50 states, two U.S. territories, and Washington, D.C., read 135,865,170 million minutes in the 2018 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge, a free, online summer reading program which aims to help students return to school reading-ready. It's designed to help kids turn the "summer slide"-the learning loss which can occur over the summer months-into a "summer leap" by discovering the power and joy of reading for fun. The complete list of Top Libraries, Top Community Partners, and "Best in State" schools is available at <http://www.scholastic.com/summer> www.scholastic.com/summer. For more information, contact Ann Marie Smith, Pickford Community Library Manager, at 906-647-1288 or <mailto:amsmith@uproc.lib.mi.us> amsmith@uproc.lib.mi.us.