Imagine an event so sweet, you would hardly believe it’s nonfiction.
During The Santa Clarita Public Library’s 17th annual Family Literacy Festival, families and children entered a real-life Candy Land at the Old Town Newhall Branch on Saturday for this year’s theme titled, “Sugar and Spice, Reading is Nice!”
Receiving a paper that embodied the iconic board game, families could earn stamps from the 16 vendors or four craft stations to earn a free book and prize once at the finish line.
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., simultaneously during the Old Town Newhall Farmers Market, attendees could partake in crafts and activities, including felt candy lollipops, candy necklaces, dessert suncatchers, candy magnets, a photo booth, a story time from 1 to 2 p.m. and sensory stations.
“Wonder Wheels,” which included emergency vehicles, trash trucks and the city fleet, were available for children to see firsthand.
Performers included Masanga Marimba and Liza Purdy, Alan Bruni and Stephen Petree Performance, as well as the Alan Bruni Drum Circle, and attendees of all ages could join along. Sammy Clarita, Elephant and Piggie, Pete the Cat and Esteban the Green Crayon were also available for photos throughout the event.
Librarian Sydney Adam discussed how sweet the event was, that it could make anyone’s “tummy hurt.”
“We always hold this event on the first Saturday of December, and we’ve been planning it basically all year — [at least] since March. We start planning months in advance, getting the committee together, gathering the ideas and themes, thinking of performers that we want to have the day of,” Adam said. “It takes a lot of manpower and planning and brainstorming to bring this day to the community, but we always look forward to it because it is one of our bigger events.”
While each year’s theme is different, the library’s focus is to ensure that crafts and decorations fully correlate with the event.
“I’m excited to see the community come together and seeing them get so excited about the crafts, the freebies, and then just seeing the Newhall Library always lively like this every year is always a really great feeling,” Adam said. “We did have everything outside this time, so maybe that’s the one thing that’s a little bit different. We sometimes try to incorporate something inside, but we wanted to see if keeping everything outside would allow the library to still be a quiet space for people to go and take a break. But the turnout was absolutely wonderful.”
While this event is a tradition in Santa Clarita, Gabriela Martinez, bilingual communication specialist for the city of Santa Clarita, discussed the second year of the bilingual outreach initiative.
“This is the second year that we do a bilingual outreach, so we’re excited to have seen [an expanded] group this year. All of our content was in both English and Spanish, and we saw an amazing turnout,” Martinez said. “The goal is to help promote literacy and help kids see that reading is fun, and that you can learn to read and write by dancing, creating crafts. The library welcomes everyone in the community, and we want people to feel comfortable here.”
For Michael Merino, who is a first-year marketing and outreach coordinator for the Santa Clarita Library, the library is a hub for residents of all ages to come together.
“Family Literacy Festival is all about bringing the community together. This year we had a Candy Land theme, so we wanted to make sure there were tons of fun activities, crafts, live music and a drum circle for the community to all engage in,” Merino said. “It’s been super fun to interact with [everyone] and learn more about what people love about the library. I love our ‘Reading Time’ that our Council does. It’s an awesome way that our leadership interacts with the community.”
