Three-year-old Remy walked into the newly-renovated Unalaska Public Library earlier this month, hand-in-hand with his dad Carlos Tayag, his library card hanging from a carabiner across his chest. He approached the desk — his eyes just above the countertop — and handed a form to the librarian, titles of different children’s books scribbled on the gridded white sheet. Library staff greeted him with a paper certificate and a medal on a sparkling gold ribbon that read “1,000 books before kindergarten.”
Remy received the award because of a nationwide initiative to encourage families to read together and prepare little ones for kindergarten.
About four kids on the island have completed the program in about as many years, according to library staff. Five-year-old Stephen Black was the first kid in Unalaska to finish the program back in 2018.
“It sounds a little daunting, but if you just even read one book a day with a kid, it takes you like two-and-a-half years for them to make it to 1,000,” said City Librarian Karen Kresh.
Kresh, who’s been in the role for nearly a decade, was having a particularly exciting Friday morning at the library.
“Today was a very big day in our family, because my son Remy, who's three, finished his 1,000 books,” she said. “He brought in all of his logs. We've been saving his logs from zero to 1,000, and we finally finished them this past week.”
Kresh and her husband started reading to Remy when he was just a few days old.
“I think books, especially for kids that may live in a small town or have a small environment, open up a lot of worlds for them and their imagination,” Tayag said.
Last year, Alaska fourth graders were behind nearly all other states in their reading test scores. The state of Alaska has made reading a priority, approving the Reads Act last June, which seeks to improve early literacy in public schools.
In Unalaska, Kresh said families can stop by the children’s room to pick up all kinds of stories. Some of her favorites are the Bustletown series, “Berry Song” and “Z is for Moose.”
Reading with your children, she said, can help them learn vocabulary they might not pick up from everyday conversations. They’ll learn narrative skills and how to tell stories themselves, and it’ll give them a boost with reading comprehension.
“And finally,” Kresh said, “it's just about quality time together. Quality, quiet, cozy time that you are spending with your child, both focused on the same thing and cuddled up together. Those are so good for a child's brain development and their emotional development. And reading time is really good for families in that way too.”
For Remy — whose favorite books are about construction — it wasn’t about getting an award, according to Tayag. But, he said, he hopes his son will look back one day and think it was really cool that his parents made an effort to spend time together and read.
“Reading has kind of fostered his growth and brain development, and it's amazing to watch,” Tayag said. “We had a baby and now we have a three-and-a-half year old who talks and can recognize letters and is beginning to read on his own. He can recognize some three-letter words. And I don't even really know how that happened. It just happened, you know? But I think it all has to do with that we took the time to read books with him.”
Remy starts preschool this fall. His dad said reading at home has helped prepare him for the transition.
The Unalaska Public Library’s summer reading program is going on now. For more information, contact the library at (907) 581-5060.
For full disclosure, Carlos Tayag is an employee of KUCB, but he does not direct or influence the newsroom.
