Nine-year-old Tyler Weaver’s love of reading has propelled him to the top of his local public library’s reading club every summer, but his continuous success is causing one librarian to worry about the fairness of the program.
The self-proclaimed “king of the reading club” has reigned over the “Dig Into Reading” contest at the Hudson Falls Public Library ever since he was in kindergarten. Now a fifth grader, the New York boy read 63 books from June 24 to Aug. 3, averaging more than 10 books per week. His mother told The Glen Falls Post-Star that over the past five years, Tyler has knocked out 373 books.
“Everybody he tells, he gets high-fives,” Katie Weaver told the paper. “Everybody’s so proud of him.”
That is, everybody except the library’s director, who is afraid that Tyler’s success is intimidating the other children.
“Other kids quit because they can’t keep up,” Hudson Falls Public Library Director Marie Gandron told The Post-Star.
Gandron had plans to change the contest rules, making the reading contest less of a contest and more of a luck-of-the-draw. Before Tyler’s mother spoke to the The Post-Star, the library director had planned to just draw children’s names out of a hat to determine the future winners.
But the winner doesn’t think that system would be fair.
“If they end up where a librarian would pick out a name from a hat…she might only read one slip and then [that child] would be picked out,” Tyler said. “He didn’t put enough effort in and he won. It’s not fair. How would it even be a contest if you just picked a name out of a hat?”
Gandron’s plans have been nixed, thanks to media involvement, but she does admit that “as far as [she] knows,” Tyler has followed all of the rules of the competitions and has won fair and square. Children participating in the reading club must read books suitable to his or her grade level. Upon returning the book, a librarian will ask the young bookworms a question to ensure that the book was actually read. Children are only required to read 10 books in order to be eligible to attend the party at the end of the summer.
