3rd Annual Guernsey County Reading Festival

CAMBRIDGE, OH- The East Central Ohio Educational Service Center has teamed up with local schools, and other community organizations throughout Guernsey County for the 3rd Annual Guernsey County Reading Festival.

The event took place this afternoon and followed a theme of “Reading is Sweet”. A lot of candy themed activities and decorations were also at the festival.

“This is actually an event that we’ve been doing in Tuscarawas County for 23 years, I haven’t been doing it for 23 years but I’ve been doing it there for five years, three years here, and we’re actually going to be starting it in Belmont county as well, and that just kind of covers a lot of our service area, we serve school districts in Belmond, Guernsey, Tusc., Carroll, Harrison and Noble County,” said Sarah Spies, the Programming and Communication Coordinator at East Central Ohio Educational Service Center.

There were balloon animals, face paintings and many other activities for the whole family to enjoy. Each child who attended was able to leave with a free book.

“Kids are walking away today with at least like three to five books, I asked one kid ‘how many books do you have?’ and he said ‘FIVE!’ and I was like ‘oh wow that’s amazing’. The idea is to put books in the hands of kids, one of the biggest indicators of childhood literacy is just the number of books in a family’s house, so the more books kids have the more likely they are to be literate, the more likely they are to continue to read, and to love reading, if there are any parents out there watching or listening, read to your kids at night, it is the best thing you can do for a kid,” said Spies.

They plan to hold the event again next year during the first weekend in February at the Pritchard Laughlin Civic Center.