‘CRAZY ABOUT SCIENCE’

BIG LAKE — Having killed some time Thursday asking kids what cool stuff they did this summer, “Jupiter” Jeff Mitchell gets the go-ahead from Assistant Librarian Peggy Oberg to start the show.

“Miss Peggy’s ready, are you guys ready?” he asks the 30 or so kids seated Indian-style in front of him.

“Yeah!” comes the reply, shouted in unison.

Mitchell is a relatively familiar face around the Valley. He runs the local Mad Science franchise, bringing presentations of scientific concepts to local schools and events. In the course of a half hour he performs a card trick, throws out some fireballs and, with a volunteer from the crowd, uses a jet of air to unspool a roll of toilet paper onto an adult spinning in circles.

“I am certifiably nuts. I am crazy about science,” he tells the kids.

Mitchell’s presentation is just one of many the library has had this year for its summer reading program. Oberg’s introduction plugged the next one — a pet show in which, she assured the children, they could enter stuffed animals if they have no real ones. She said after that there’s just one more; a big barbecue with the whole community invited.

Oberg seemed pleased to have such a healthy turnout, both at Thursday’s events and at the summer program events in general.

“It’s going great. We’ve had very good response,” she said.

Throughout the summer kids are rewarded for reading with everything from free books to candy and pizza. Oberg said she took over the program in 1996, the year the Miller’s Reach Fire devastated the community.

“We were kind of in disarray,” she said. That was a bad year for attendance at the summer events, But the program has recovered. “It’s just been growing steadily ever since.”

When the summer ends, Oberg said, the library will continue hosting other programs. There are story times for preschoolers and after school story times for younger elementary school students. Those include snacks and crafts. This school year, she said, the library is kicking off a series of monthly Science Saturdays.

“Those will be geared toward third-graders,” she said.

Big Lake is far from the only library in the Valley to offer a summer program, or even the only community to stage a pet show as part of it. Wasilla does a pet show, too. Palmer’s program this year has featured volcanoes, rockets and a visit from a nationally known children’s author. It’s set to end today with a circus performance.

Valley-wide, the programs are wrapping up at the end of the month. Like Big Lake, Sutton, Talkeetna, Trapper Creek, Willow, Wasilla and Palmer have story hours for preschoolers. Times and days vary. Some of them include snacks and craft projects.

A lot of the libraries also do what they call a “baby lap sit” featuring games, songs and stories for babies and their parents. Some do things like participate in the Battle of the Books program for school kids and help organize book clubs and spelling bees for adults.

To see what Valley libraries have to offer, visit matsulibraries.org, which has links to all of the Mat-Su Borough libraries as well as the city libraries in Palmer and Wasilla.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.