Bowdoinham offers story walks during pandemic - Portland Press Herald - pressherald.com

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Bowdoinham Public Library librarian Kate Cutko has set up a story walk at Mailly Waterfront Park along the Cathance River to provide kids an outdoor reading experience during the coronavirus pandemic. Darcie Moore / The Times Record

BOWDOINHAM — Bowdoinham librarian Kate Cutko has created a series of outdoor story walks around town for kids through the summer after the coronavirus pandemic halted story time and other kids’ programs at the Bowdoinham Public Library.

A story walk is where a children’s book is deconstructed and the pages of the book are laminated and spread along a walking trail.

“When the virus hit, I was worried about not being able to get together with my normal groups of kids (for) the weekly story time we usually do inside the library with my little preschoolers,” Cutko said Wednesday. “But also my summer reading program where kids come into the library.”

To help pay for the project, Cutko turned to the Bowdoinham Community Development Initiative, a nonprofit in town that offered grants to help local businesses and organizations respond to the pandemic. The organization granted the library $500 to pay for Islandport Press in Yarmouth to print large laminated book pages from four children’s books.

Cutko then posted the pages on wood posts on a trail by the former public works department for about a month and pages from another book along the new Red Rose Preserve trail behind Bowdoinham Community School for another month. The third book was set up at Bowdoinham Community School. This allowed families to get outside and read in a new way, and to visit a trail in town they may not have walked before.

Sisters Anja Leschefske, 5, and Sigrid Leschefske, 2, enjoy “Halfway Wild” by Laura Freudig which was featured by a story walk in Bowdoinham over the summer. Photo courtesy of Ingrid Leschefske

“I got the comment that kids were hiking farther than they would have normally, especially on the Red Rose Preserve,” Cutko said, where the trail dips down a hill into a gully, crosses a stream and stretches up the other side of the gully. “A couple (social media comments) said my kids were scampering up that hill so fast. They wanted to get to the next pages of the book.”

Story time in the library is still on hold but the fourth story walk, featuring a book called “Hold This” by Carolyn Cory Scoppettone, was set up recently at Mailly Waterfront Park at 6 Main St. Cutko said this will be the last story walk until spring. Each month as she’s finished with a story walk book, the pages have been passed along to a friend of Cutko who has put them up at a school in Richmond.

“It’s a safe thing to do, it can be multi-generational,” Cutko said. “I know grandparents who took their grandchildren out. Some people have never been on the Red Rose Preserve so the owner of the Red Rose, Kennebec Estuary Land Trust, was thrilled to have it.”

Cutko also got a grant of $1,200 to have a mobile book cart built for the library which was at the town’s farmers market every Saturday during the summer. The cart was full of donated books people could take and leave a donation if they chose.

“That cart, I think, is going to be ac component of a lot of different programming,” Cutko said.

Sisters Anja Leschefske, age 5, and Sigrid Leschefske, age 2, read a page from “Hold This” by Carolyn Cory Scoppettone featured in a story walk at Mailly Waterfront Park in Bowdoinham. Photo courtesy of Ingrid Leschefske