The Stratford Public Library and libraries across Perth County are hosting Family Literacy Day events, activities and games from Jan. 23-27.
The Stratford Public Library and libraries across Perth County will be encouraging families to celebrate their heritage next week as part of a series of activities, games and events planned in the leadup to Family Literacy Day on Jan. 27.
From Jan. 23 to Jan. 27, families are invited to visit the library in Stratford – or any library across the county – to participate in a variety of heritage-themed activities, including weaving, Perth County trivia courtesy of the Stratford Perth Archives, writing and coloring activities, a story wall for kids to draw pictures of their heritage, displays featuring books by Canadian authors that families can read together to learn more about cultural heritages that may be different from their own, a scavenger hunt, and, of course, crokinole – a game invented in Perth County in 1876.
“Perth County Information Network libraries have actually worked together on this one, so similar activities will be at all the libraries in Perth County. …When children learn about heritage, they get to learn about their family history, but also celebrate and have compassion for the histories of other people as well, so we’re really trying to embrace that theme,” said Stratford Public Library children’s program co -computer Trish MacGregor.
Each library in Perth County will also offer a story trail that follows the events of a specific children’s book. In Stratford, that book will be Australian children’s author Mem Fox’s picture book, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge. Children and their families will have the chance to read the story by following the page numbers through the library garden outdoors. After, they can stop in at the Little Prince Micro Cinema and Lounge in downtown Stratford to watch Wilfrid, a short film by Stratford filmmakers Samuel G. Davey and Sean P. Dolan’s based on that book, which is being screened as part of Stratford’s Lights On festival and was shot almost entirely in Stratford.
“It’s a great story about a little boy who befriends a woman (suffering from memory loss) who lives in a nursing home next door,” MacGregor said. “The boy meets others in the nursing home who share their memories of the past to help this woman find her own memories through items he collects. … The book and the film also tie in really well to Alzheimer Awareness Month (in January) and what a little person can do for older people, especially when their stories are shared.”
On Jan. 26 at 7 pm, the Perth County Information Network is hosting a virtual reading of Little Bear in Foster Care by SP Joseph Lyons, a St. Marys-area award-winning Anishinaabe Algonquin children’s author. He wrote the book based on his own experiences as an Indigenous child living in foster care and a survivor of the Sixties Scoop.
The book reading, which will be held over Zoom, is the only the Family Literacy Day event that requires registration in advance. For more information on all the events, visit splibrary.ca/events/family-literacy-day-0. For Perth County residents, information on literacy day events at a library near you can be found on the local library branch’s website.