The Bonnyville Municipal Library is reporting an impressive turnout for their “Read for 15” challenge on Friday.
The challenge -issued to libraries across Alberta- was a simple one. Encourage as many people to read for 15 minutes on Friday as possible. Programmer Callyn Yarn says they were a bit late in finding out about it, but still managed to get 354 confirmed readers throughout the town. “We had a couple late submissions from the schools, so we can add another 45 to that, but they weren’t tallied into our numbers when we submitted on Saturday,” she adds.
Those numbers translate to roughly 5% of Bonnyville’s population, putting the town at 27th overall in Alberta. The ranking beats some pretty big names, such as Calgary, Lethbridge, and Leduc. Donalda was declared the winner with 61% of their population participating.
“Hopefully we can make it into an annual event” says Yarn. “Once we start to get the word out each year I think it can grow bigger and bigger. It’s a really easy thing to participate in. Most people read for fifteen minutes a day even if it’s just a newspaper.”
Dr. Bernard Brosseau School were the heavy hitters for Bonnyville. The entire school all read a book as part of the challenge.