This summer, the Cheshire Public Library turned up the heat (and the magic) on our Summer Adventure by introducing a wildly fun and fiery addition: Reading Dragons!
Originally developed by the Dover Public Library in Ohio, Reading Dragons is a free, card-based reading incentive program that rewards kids with collectible dragon cards for each hour they read. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of librarians nationwide, the program has taken flight, now used in over 400 libraries across 42 states and 5 countries—and we’re thrilled to be part of the dragon-loving fun.
How It Works
At its core, Reading Dragons inspires kids to read more by tapping into their love of collecting, creativity, and games:
Finish 3 levels of the Cheshire Library Summer Reading Adventure and get a complete starter deck of Dragon Duel Cards—it is that simple.
Each card features original artwork of dragons and mythical creatures.
Gameplay is similar to Rock, Paper, Scissors, except with dragon types (fire, water, and leaf).
Cheshire’s Dragon Dueling Decks: Our Fiery Twist
We decided to take the Reading Dragons concept and add our own twist to the cards and the program. Originally, the program called for giving readers a individual trading card for each hour they read. At first, we planned to follow the program as designed but we quickly realized this would overwhelm our staff. Instead, we decided to give participants who completed the first three levels of our program, a full starter deck of 24 custom-designed cards.
This not only freed up staff for programs, collection maintenance, and development but it also allowed our summer readers to get their cards at the halfway point. This allowed us to recapture our summer readers attention. We are hoping this will lead to more kids to finishing the program this year.
One of our proudest additions? The Bookwyrm Dragon set, lovingly designed by our talented staff member Laurie Lee, who previously created the Cheshire Cat logo for last year’s registration prize. This year, Laurie stunned us again with her imaginative Cheshire Cat/Dragon hybrid—one of the stars of the starter deck! Laurie is an incrdible artist who always goes above and beyond for the library.
Game On: Our First Dragon Duel Tournament
This week, the dragons truly came to life with our first-ever Dragon Duel Tournament—and the turnout was amazing! Our library was packed with excited young readers-turned-card battlers, eager to put their decks to the test! Their goal defeat their opponent’s dragons and win special edition cards with game changing powers!
All of our participants received a special edition card, however our tournament champions walked away with the most powerful card we have unveiled so far:
The dreaded and coveted Cock-a-doodle-DOOM card! A card that harnesses the massive power of the Chicken jockey and defeats any card in the game. Needless to say, this will be a very limited edition card.
What’s Next for Cheshire Library and Reading Dragons?
This is just the beginning. We are already brewing up plans to continue the Reading Dragons experience into the fall and winter, with:
All-new cards
New game changing powers
Even more duels, events, and excitement
Reading has never been so mythical—or so much fun.
A huge thank you to the creators of the Reading Dragons program, local artist and library staff member Laurie Lee, and to our own amazing team here in Cheshire. We’re thrilled to bring reading and creativity together in such an unforgettable way.
We recently uncovered some Cheshire Library memorabilia from at least 60 years ago. Though they’re regular objects you would find at any library—a bookmark, a checkout card holder, and a library card—they reveal a lot about the time they’re from and remind us of the dramatic changes that have taken place since.
First the bookmark: At the time the bookmark was printed, CPL’s hours were a bit different than they are now. They were open Monday through Friday, from 3:00 to 5:00 and 7:00 to 9:00 PM, presumably to allow for a dinner break. These days, we’re open from 9:00 AM to 8:30 PM Monday through Thursday, and 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Fridays. As a reminder, our summer Saturday hours for July and August are from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM.
Maybe the most interesting part of the bookmark is the phone number for The Cheshire Insurance Agency: three digits!
The library checkout card holder is most notable for the quaint slogan of First Federal Savings and Loan Association: “You’ll find us most helpful.” The First Federal Savings and Loan Association isn’t around anymore. 218 Maple Ave changed hands several times in the late 20th century and became a branch of Naugatuck Savings Bank in 1999 (later renamed “Ion Bank” in 2013).
Lastly, the library card. Those who’ve been coming to the library for a while know our cards have gone through many iterations. I love when patrons come to the circulation desk with one of our old Cheshire Cat branded cards because it means they’ve been loyal patrons for some time. But I’ve never seen a card anywhere near as old as this one. In place of a barcode, there’s a stamped metal insert with only four digits.
Across the board, the United States has become a more expensive place to live in the last 57 years, but at least you don’t still have to pay 25¢ when you need to replace your card! (25¢ in 1968 is the equivalent of $2.32 today).
It can be easy to walk through today’s libraries and look at them as though they came into existence at that very moment. Historical artifacts like these remind us that we’re part of a long chain of library excellence—standing on the shoulders of giants, as they say.
As a parent of two young kids, my time away from work is a constant stream of requests and/or demands. The 4-year-old: refill my milk cup even though you’re currently buttering my toast and haven’t even made your coffee yet. The 20-month-old: read Trashy Town to me again. The 4-year-old: I just discovered My Little Pony and I love it, so now my name is Princess Twilight Sparkle and my brother is Spike. Spike: read! Twilight: you are no longer Momma, you’re now Princess Celestia. Can you talk like Princess Celestia? Spike: I will scream-cry if you don’t read to me in two seconds.
Sometimes you need a change of scenery in order to prevent your kids (or yourself) from scream-crying. For me, the library’s museum passes have been invaluable when it’s too wet to visit the playground at Bartlem Park or too cold for miniature horses at Brooksvale Park. Museum passes offer discounted or free admission for adults and kids to museums and educational attractions across Connecticut and beyond. You can reserve them up to 30 days in advance and print almost all of them from home anytime, requiring no special trip to the library. For added convenience, many museums will just scan the pass right from your phone. Here’s our young crew’s experience with the passes.
The Children’s Museum
Location: 180 Mohegan Drive, West Hartford
Pass perks: one free admission for every paid admission
Cost before perks: $15/person ages 2 and up, below 2 is free (price info)
We visited The Children’s Museum when Twilight was two years old and Spike was an unhatched egg. The museum accepted the digital pass that was sent to my phone via email, and soon we were in an indoor air-conditioned wonderland. The museum looks like a former school with one long hallway and branching classrooms that have been converted to different activity areas. I appreciated the easy navigation! The woods-themed dramatic play room was a hit, as was the craft room. The dinosaur room was another success.
There’s also a large collection of live animals spread across three rooms: snakes, chinchillas, box turtles, and more, all of whom came to the museum after being given up, injured, or confiscated. The museum has regular demonstrations where kids can meet some of the animals. Twilight wasn’t interested in petting the ball python, but there were so many other activities that kept her engaged that it wasn’t a loss.
KidsPlay Children’s Museum
Location: 61 Main St, Torrington
Pass perks: Half-price admission for up to 6 family members
Cost before perks: $14 for everyone age 1+, free under 12 months (price info)
KidsPlay has become our family’s favorite museum. There are so many rooms and activities here: play vehicles, a climbing wall, air play, a craft room, a music room with a piano, a grocery store, a pioneer cabin with dress-up clothing. We could not possibly visit every area in one trip! We were impressed not only with the breadth of activities, but how clean and well-maintained the space was. We loved this museum so much on our discounted visit that we got a year-long membership, so we’ve gotten to experience rotating play areas like kinetic sand and a hockey rink.
Street parking is a breeze in downtown Torrington, and there’s an off-street lot as well. The only drawback is its limited schedule. As with any museum, check the hours of operation before you visit!
Roaring Brook Nature Center
Location: 70 Gracey Road, Canton
Pass perks: one free admission for every paid admission
Cost before perks: $9 for adults, $7 for children 12 and under (price info)
Our Children’s Museum pass also grants discounted admission to Roaring Brook Nature Center (not to be confused with Roaring Brook Park, the not-for-the-faint-of-heart local trail). The nature center has an indoor section with taxidermy dioramas of our local habitats, live animals, play nooks, and a library, plus an outdoor area with rescued birds and turtles. Twilight enjoyed the scavenger hunt, singing lullabies to Tomasina the black vulture, and looking for turtles in the pond.
The highlight of the trip, though, was a hike along the trails next to the nature center. The trails are free to access and open from dawn to dusk, and a lot of it is hemlock forest (i.e., those really cool dark forests that make you feel like you’re a character in a fantasy book). The kids played Poohsticks from the bridge over the creek and explored a set of lean-tos while their bird nerd of a parent listened to warblers and nuthatches calling in the trees.
Connecticut Science Center
Location: 250 Columbus Blvd, Hartford
Coupon perks: 15% off up to six admissions
Cost before perks: $29 for adults, $23 for ages 3-12, plus $7 per person for butterfly encounter (price info), plus $7 per vehicle for 3 hours of parking in the adjacent garage (garage information)
Twilight loves the CT Science Center. When she was two years old, we could easily spend an hour just in the water play area. (They provide smocks, but it’s still a good idea to bring backup clothes and shoes.) There’s also live animals including a sloth, a butterfly encounter, and lots of interactive science activities that get more interesting as Twilight gets older. A glass elevator lets you look out across the whole museum, and it’s roomy enough for you to indulge in repeat rides without compromising foot traffic.
This is not a reservable pass, but a coupon that you can pick up anytime and use anytime. Even with a coupon, this is admittedly a pricier outing. But if you can swing it, it’s worth a visit.
Dinosaur State Park
Location: 400 West St, Rocky Hill
Pass perks: free admission to the exhibit center for two adults and four kids age 6-12; kids 5 and under are free
Cost before perks: $6 for ages 13+, $2 for ages 6-12, free parking and trail access
The kids recently visited 200-million-year-old dilophosaurus footprints at Dinosaur State Park, where you can visit indoor exhibits for free with the CT Parks Pass. (This is a physical pass that needs to be picked up and delivered back to the library.) The footprints are housed in a geodesic dome that also includes dino dioramas, crafts, and some live reptiles and amphibians. The adults loved it, but Twilight was a little disappointed that dinosaurs were extinct and weren’t there stomping around making the footprints.
Luckily, the nature trails outside the exhibit center are perfect for small legs, and they’re free to use without the pass. We saw a big (and completely harmless) water snake sunning itself near the marsh!
Overall, there are so many activities at each place that you really can’t go wrong with borrowing a pass. And even if your museum outing is more miss than hit, hey – at least it’s a few hours in which your kids aren’t pretending they’re Keith Moon and your living room is a Holiday Inn!
Why don’t all the passes give me free admission?
We would love to offer passes that grant free admission everywhere, but the museums set the terms for their passes and decide what they’re going to make available for libraries to purchase. Sometimes that’s free admission. Sometimes that’s just a discount. It all depends on the museum, but we always get the best discount we can!
Why doesn’t the library offer passes to Beardsley Zoo, Mystic Aquarium, or the Maritime Aquarium?
Good question! Unfortunately, the aquarium passes don’t really offer a good value for most patrons. (Think a percentage off a yearly membership, or a few dollars off if you purchase add-ons beyond general admission.) Instead of disappointing our patrons, we opt to get different passes with better discounts. As for the Beardsley Zoo, they changed their ordering process a couple years ago, and it doesn’t jive with the way we make purchases. However, we’re planning to add more animal-themed passes in 2026. Stay tuned!
What about the Peabody Museum? Why doesn’t the library offer a pass?
We don’t offer a Peabody Museum pass because it’s completely free! They gave it a major overhaul recently, and it’s a gorgeous space. Fossilized skeletons and plants are on the first floor, with minerals and animal dioramas on the third floor. Human history is exhibited on the second floor.
There are several ways to save money at the Cheshire Public Library. If you want to learn budgeting, investment, and retirement skills, come browse our large collection of personal finance books, magazines, and e-books. For more immediate savings, check out our museum passes. We offer discounts and free admission to some of the best museums in the state.
But today, I’d like to zoom in on our Research page, where you can get free access to websites that normally require a paid subscription. A recent CNET study found that the average US adult spends $91(!) on subscription services each month. We can’t help with Costco or Netflix, but you may find something here that will come in handy…
The New York Times
Normally $24.99 per month, free from the library
You can access the digital version of The New York Times both inside and outside the library. This means access to articles, reviews, podcasts, recipes, and games (so you can impress your friends with a Wordle streak). If you’re more of a “print” kind of person, we have both The NYT newspaper and magazine available on the lower level of the library.
*Note: Only the “News” portion of the website is available outside the library
Consumer Reports
Normally $10.00 per month, free from the library
Consumer Reports is a nonprofit organization that helps consumers gauge the value, quality, and authenticity of goods and services. It’s a trusted resource for unbiased reviews of cars, appliances, electronics, and lots more. Like The NYT, we also have the print version of the Consumer Reports magazine on the lower level of the library.
Ancestry allows users to access a massive database of genealogical and historical resources. Search through Census records; military records; court, land, and probate records; vital and church records; directories; petitions for naturalization… The list goes on and on. This service is only available at the library itself so make sure to visit our public computers on the lower level.
Mango Languages
Normally $19.99 per month, free from the library
Chances are you’ve heard of Duolingo. I use it myself and like that it keeps me responsible for learning every day. On the whole, though, it feels somewhat lacking in actual education. Duolingo’s focus is on gamification can make it feel more like Candy Crush than French 101. Mango Languages is a great alternative that provides structured lesson plans that cover vocabulary, grammar, and culture. What’s more, Mango Languages boasts 70+ world languages and courses for English learners as well.
The Cheshire Public Library is planning on hosting a One Book, One Town program in 2025. For those unfamiliar with this concept, the idea is to select a book the whole town can read “together”. The library will host a kick-off party and plan programming based on the book’s narrative and themes. We are so excited for this chance to bring the community together under one book, and we’ve been giving the selection process a lot of thought. As a fun peek behind the curtains, I would like to talk a little about the books that we thought could be potential contenders and the reasons why they weren’t selected.
The first novel we considered for this program is Overstory by Richard Powers. This is a dense novel both in size (512 pages) and in content. The story follows 9 characters spanning from the 1950s through the early 2000s as their stories overlap. It’s difficult to say exactly what Overstory is about. It’s a novel about trees, but really, it’s a novel about people, nature and how closely these two worlds overlap. It’s a novel about the importance of paying attention to nature as well as tackling questions about what we can do, both as individuals and collectively, to protect nature and each other. It is beautifully written, each character given their own story and arc. It is also a powerful love letter to trees.
Ultimately, we decided not to choose this book for our program because of its length and concerns about being able to secure the author for an author talk. Powers will be busy with press for his new book titled Playground about oceans, which I am sure is as masterfully written as Overstory. If you can carve out time to read this novel, I highly recommend it.
The second novel in the running for this program was The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai. Like Overstory, The Great Believers also made it onto the New York Times list of the best 100 books of the 21st century. The story jumps in time; one part is set in Chicago between 1985 and 1992 and the other in Paris in 2015. The novel is about a group of friends, predominantly gay men, navigating the AIDS crisis in its early days. This is the strongest part of the novel. Makkai captures the fear, loss, and grief from this era while still managing to tell a beautiful story about love and friendship. As the reader, it is easy to fall in love with these characters and feel tremendous sadness about the senselessness of their deaths.
Unfortunately, the parts of the novel that take place in 2015 are less effective. Much of these chapters, which concern survivor’s guilt and lasting trauma, feel extraneous and only serve to distract from the gripping 80s narrative. We decided against this book partly because of these jarring time jumps, as well as concern about the overall heaviness of the subject matter. That being said, if you are looking for something on the power of love and friendship, please don’t hesitate to pick up this book.
The last novel strongly considered for our One Book program was The Women by Kristin Hannah. The hype around this novel has been almost as big as the number of patrons requesting it at the library. The story is about combat nurses in Vietnam and their lives after the war. It’s a difficult read, particularly in its depiction of post traumatic stress disorder. The resources for soldiers returning from the Vietnam war were abysmal and the resources for returning female combat nurses were non-existent. The novel deals with the struggles of settling back into civilian life while having your war experiences repeatedly minimized or even denied.
This book would appeal to a wide audience, particularly those who lived during the Vietnam War, those who served in the war, or those who are interested in the history of that era. We decided against selecting this book because Kristin Hannah’s speaking fees are prohibitively expensive.
We are hoping to finalize the book selection for the program by the end of this month so be sure to keep an eye out early next year for the book unveiling as well as a list of programs. We can’t wait to read with you!
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