PITTSBURGH (August 2023) – Pittsburgh is a city of readers! Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh wrapped up its 2023 Summer Reading Program yesterday with its annual Summer Reading Extravaganza at the Library’s historic Oakland campus. At this free family-friendly outdoor festival attendees celebrated the conclusion of Summer Reading with a variety of programs and activities around this year’s theme, “Find Your Voice, and awarded one participant who correctly guessed the total number of books Pittsburghers read this summer with a grand prize package containing tickets to local attractions and sports memorabilia.
Between June 4 and August 6, thousands of Pittsburghers logged 47,151 books of all kinds, eBooks and audiobooks (an increase of 71% from 2022). Participation figures soared 30.5 percent from 2022’s program and the number of Yinzers who read at least five books was up by almost 1,000 from last year. CLP – Sheraden saw one of the biggest boosts in the number of summer readers, with a 300% increase.
The Library’s Summer Reading program is designed to help students retain the academic progress they made during the school year. Research shows that reading 3-5 books, or as little as 10-15 minutes a day, during the summer helps students return to school ready to learn and prevent summer learning loss.
“As Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s 2023 Summer Reading Program comes to an end, we want to congratulate our community on a fun book-filled summer,” said Andrew Medlar, Library President & Director. “We are proud of the incredible and exciting growth of this year’s program as Pittsburghers found their voice through exploring interests, discovering new ones and connecting with others! Special thanks to the Library and our Board, sponsors, donors and partners for their commitment to education and literacy. It has been an amazing summer and we look forward to helping keep the passion for learning strong as students return to the classroom.”
The Library’s 2023 Summer Reading Program was supported by sponsors and partners dedicated to championing literacy and learning for all Library patrons and communities. These include presenting sponsor EQT, program partners August Wilson African American Cultural Center and the Pittsburgh CLO, and generous corporate sponsors including Chase, Duolingo and UPMC Health Plan.
Summer Reading is a family affair. It helps children and teens develop life-long reading habits and enables parents to take an active role in the fun and learning that reading provides. The following lists are based on the data collected from the Summer Reading program. Popular genres this year included romance, thriller, suspense, mystery, historical fiction and fantasy.
This year’s most popular books of the summer include…
Top Children’s Titles
Pokémon Adventures (Hidenori Kusaka)
Guinness World Record
Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (Jeff Kinney)
Bone (Jeff Smith)
Should I Share My Ice Cream? (Mo Willems)
The Pigeon Needs a Bath! (Mo Willems)
The Pigeon has to go to School! (Mo Willems)
Dog Man Series (Dav Pilkey)
Cat Kid Comic Club (Dav Pilkey)
Big Nate. Beware of Low-flying Corn Muffins (Lincoln Peirce)
Top Teen Titles
One Piece (Eiichir Oda)
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Suzanne Collins)
My Hero Academia series (Khei Horikoshi)
Chainsaw Man (Tatsuki Fujimoto)
Six of Crows (Leigh Bardugo)
A Court of Wings and Ruin (Sarah Maas)
A Court of Mist and Fury (Sarah Maas)
One-punch Man series (ONE)
Naruto series (Masashi Kishimoto)
Komi Can’t Communicate series (Tomohito Oda)
Top Adult Titles
Sea of Tranquility (Emily St. John Mandel)
The Light we Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times (Michelle Obama)
The Midnight Library (Matt Haig)
Book Lovers (Emily Henry)
Finding Me (Viola Davis)
The Candy House: a Novel (Jennifer Egan)
Cloud Cuckoo Land: a Novel (Anthony Doerr)
The Paris Apartment: a Novel (Lucy Foley)
Sparring Partners (John Grisham)
The 6:20 Man (David Baldacci)
About Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is supporting individual achievement and strengthening the power of community. Through the community’s investment, the Library is enhancing the lives of people in the greater Pittsburgh region with dynamic and diverse resources such as creative learning programs for children and teens, job and career assistance for our community’s workforce, and free computer and internet access for all. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh builds community, enables learning, provides access and values people.
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