Growing a Reader: Kids' Books, Tips and More

There's been unconfirmed reports that the lone High Park Zoo capybara still at large has been visiting various Toronto Public Libraries inquiring about joining the 2016 TD Summer Reading Club along with all the other kids in the city. An eyewitness photo was captured:

Rocking a new TD Summer Reading Club t-shirt that does nothing for its camouflage capabilities but works its style factor like a Parisian runway model, it's reportedly been seen on library computers creating an online virtual notebook to record all of the books it plans to read and listen to during the summer, checking out the Top Recommended Reads, writing book reviews and story endings, reading e-books, and submitting jokes like "How many guinea pigs does it take to screw in a light bulb?"  

It’s also suspected that it will make an appearance at other Toronto Public Libraries on June 25 after hearing that many of them will be holding special programs and activities to celebrate Get Your Summer Read On Day. If it does, it’s almost a certainty that it will be first in line to sign up with the other kids for its own Summer Reading Club kit. By signing up for the club on Get Your Summer Read On Day, it even has a chance to win a pair of tickets to a Toronto Blue Jays home game on August 12. Nothing says "summer" like a capybara at the ball park.

If you’ve been following the story of the two capybaras who have been foraging and tanning outside of the confines of their assigned pen at the High Park Zoo, you probably know that the other escapee –possibly Bonnie, possibly Clyde… it’s not talking—has finally been corralled. It’s now with Chewy, the original High Park capybara, undoubtedly arguing about who gets the upper bunk and control of the television remote in Casa de la Capi.

Up until then, it had been romping along with its partner playing spot-the-giant-rodent with park visitors and thumbing its nose at would be wranglers by swimming in a pond just a few excruciating meters beyond reach.  More notably, as chronicled in two earlier blog posts, the inquisitive creatures were reported to have found respite, leisure, and creative stimulation in at least two library branches, High Park and Fort York.

So forget using bland enticements of dried corn and recorded calls of promised capybara woo. Perhaps a snazzy shirt and some guaranteed fun and enrichment at the library is the best bait to lure the final renegade rodent back to join its pals in the High Park pokey Zoo.