 Next up, our second lightning round session at Big Talk to Small Libraries is Dare to Read. We've got Kim Priest who's from the Mary Cotton Public Library in Kansas and their population served is 2,500. That's still where you're at at the moment. Always double check those things, correct? All right. And she didn't tell us about this awesome program that they are doing for their patrons. So go ahead and take it away, Kim. All right. Thank you, Krista. I am so pleased to be able to introduce our Dare to Read program to you today. We started this program. It's called Dyslexic and Autistic Reading Engage. And we started it with a $3,500 grant from Dollar General. You can actually look up Dollar General DG Literacy.org, I believe. And for the grant applications. And very easy to fill out. And then we have another small donation by Bywater. They had a community give back program. Bywater is the parent to our online catalog, I guess. So Bywater is the school hot-tape online catalogs for libraries, yes. So what we did with this is we started a collection of grade level books and items that are printed in open dyslexic font to encourage dyslexic children and adults to read for enjoyment. And then we also added other children's books explaining what it means to be on the autistic spectrum. So then in accordance with that, we tried to educate people too. So one of our goals, our number one goal was inclusion. Our patrons are all respected and valued. And we wanted to make sure that these children were being included in our story times, our summer reading, our book clubs, and craft times. So we were interested in finding these better resources for these struggling readers. And along with that, some training and information for our staff and our adult leaders. What we found, we did a little search. Everybody comes in or has people that come in and say, oh, my child hates to read. And it's having difficulty reading. So our staff, sometimes they struggle to find that kind of information or the kind of book that a student might be able to read, especially on their own grade level. And so we did a little more searching. And we found out that 80% of the people with poor reading skills are likely dyslexic. About 20% of the population, it's estimated, has a language-based learning disability. And dyslexia is the most common of those. It occurs basically in the same number of males and females. Tends to be hereditary. But it's more diagnosed in males, simply because I had a special ed teacher tell me, the girls are much better at hiding the problem, the reading problem. And then about 1 in 44 children in the U.S. are diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. We identified 68 students in our elementary school and home school groups, with one or both conditions. And in a small town like that, that is a lot of people. So we decided, what can we do to help? We decided there was a need for the dyslexic font books. And so with this grant, we were able to pick up quite a few. Our collection now is almost 500 books that are dyslexic font or dyslexic font friendly. So we've identified those. We wanted to give direct access at earlier ages, so the kids would have a chance to enjoy reading more. And if these books are in regular type books, takes away that stigma. A lot of times in a child in classroom, if they can't read, they're taken out of the classroom for special help. But we found that if we can provide a resource that makes it easier for that child to read, helps them feel more just like the rest of the kids and doesn't take away that stigma of being different. We provide audio versions with a lot of our titles. You know, and I know that an audio plus the written word, when you're listening and reading, is a win-win situation all the time. And then we also found that we can provide e-content versions. And there's a lot of different programs, I guess. That allow your content on the screen to be switched to a different font that's easier to read. So basically we're going to go to a larger print, a darker color with the lighter words, changing the font, making it better. Hopefully we find a way to increase the reading scores in the dyslexic or autistic child because he or she will want to read more. Dyslexics tend to be extremely smart and resourceful, but just because they don't read well, they get separated. And so this gives them the opportunity to be just regular kids. This is just a small display of some of our Jared read books. We've identified them with a blue dot, so it makes it easy to identify for people when they come in. Staff can direct parents and teachers and kids to the title that we own and give a quick explanation of what we're trying to do. This is just a few tips that we use when we have somebody come in. We always encourage the people to download a browser extension called Open Dyslexia. And this is an open source font that's available for free. All these slides that you're seeing right now are in that Open Dyslexia font. You can see it's a weighted font, and supposedly it helps keep the words on the page for the kids that sometimes the words will pop off a page or they have trouble following along. And so this Open Dyslexia font waits it down and helps them follow along better. The different apps that are available, the Libby app with Overdrive, Hoopla has the ability to change your e-content to the Open Dyslexia as well as the Kindle. Another thing parents could try is a darker background with light colored fonts. Also enlarging the font to make it easier to read. And we also provide reading strips to direct focus for dyslexic readers. These next couple of slides are just a couple of the different places that we picked up are textbooks and regular reading books, Royal Fireworks Press, the publisher is a severe dyslexic himself and managed to put himself through college and started this publishing company. All his resources are online and can be found in both regular and dyslexic print. So we picked up quite a few of these. They're very affordable. He's a really great guy to talk to if you ever have any questions about it too. Amazon.com has terrific resources for both dyslexic and autistics. And they're pretty reasonable prices, definitely worth the time to study the titles and products. In addition, the Kindle app and Audible app are reasonably priced and offer a wide variety of adaptable resources in all reading levels. I found that even the youngest readers or picture books, a good share of those can all be switched to the open dyslexic font. So if you have a parent that has reading problems or reading disabilities, that parent can also switch over to this open dyslexic font and maybe have better luck reading to their child. Plus, pairing books with Audible is always a win-win situation in our book. So we kind of came upon this quite light accident. We had purchased some Here's Hank books and found that they were printed in the open dyslexic font. These are written by Henry Winkler, very famous dyslexic. So I offered it to a family that I knew was struggling with dyslexia in their family. And they gave us some very good reviews as far as readability and how their kids enjoyed the books. So we just bought more. This slide simply shows some relevant websites. OpenDyslexic.org is the place you can go to to get the open dyslexic font for your computers. It is free. You can donate if you want to, but it is free. And then the KSDE.org. This is the Kansas State Department of Education website. And there's a really good handbook on dyslexia there. I encourage you if you're interested in learning more, that's a great resource. CDC.gov. This one tells a lot about autism and the signs and symptoms of autism and really good for general information so that when somebody comes in and is talking about, you know, maybe they've got an autistic child and they're looking for different books, you know exactly what they're talking about and can offer the different resources to them then. So, and one-on-one seems to be the thing, you know, you can advertise all you want, but basically our biggest help has been when somebody has come in and they're looking for something, then you can really get down to it and talk to them and find what they're looking for. So I developed a dyslexic print collection simply because every kid deserves to enjoy reading and that's our main goal. If we can help develop and hone the skill in a dyslexic or autistic child, you know, you should see a noticeably better attitude about life in general and it definitely should boost achievement in other subjects as well. So that's basically what I've got to tell. We do have about 500 books now that we can loan out to people. We've got access clear across the state of Kansas through our state library lending and we found it to be, you know, pretty popular for some people that are looking for that kind of information and that kind of resource. I hope if you're looking at this, you know, just explore the possibilities because I know everybody has a child that's dyslexic in their community. So and if you know it and you might not, you can help them. Yeah, and if you can help them find that e-content and help them optimize it, you know, not everybody likes to put their kid on a tablet that much more, but if it's going to encourage them to read and help them enjoy reading, you know, you got to try it, I think. That's my goal. That's what I've got. All right. Okay, so go ahead and leave that slide up for now. I've got a couple of questions here to ask of you. Some that you already answered during your presentation. So I want to know what are some examples of the kind of books you showed them and what is a dyslexic fund friendly fund? Sorry to say. But someone said, oh, if the book isn't a dyslexic fund, is there usually, is there something in that book or, I mean, you did have that book take a place to order from? Right. Amazon does have dyslexic print books. Yes, they do have and we've added those and then some of them also have audio that will go along with it and we've tried to add some of those along to our collection too. A dyslexic friendly fund would be like Verdana or Verdana, Comic Sans. We have a family with a dyslexic child. The father is dyslexic also and he said he survived by reading Comic Sans script. So there are different, oh, different ones that you can use or that we have identified. Our easy reader books that we put as dyslexic friendly, those have wider lines or wider spaces between the lines, larger letters, simpler type of thing, but makes it a little easier for a child to follow along in a book. If we can make it normal to read a book, that dyslexic child is going to be a lot happier and will participate more. Someone does want to know, if you can go back to this slide, you had the one publisher that you ordered from. Someone wants to know, where can we order books that are easier? Royal Airworks Press. Yes, rfwp.com. It's got all levels there including curriculum, homeschool curriculum there too. And you said the person in charge of this is a person with dyslexia themselves. Yes, perfect. All right, so you did indicate on the books that you had that blue sticker that indicated that that was part of the collection. Correct. Yes, awesome. That makes it a little easier for identification when they get put back on the shelves, if somebody's looking for something. Our online catalog does have a special collection designation, so that if anybody is looking for it in that catalog, they can look for the special collection there to read. So you do lend them through interlibrary loan, then if other? Yes. Yes. Our Northeast Kansas system, Neckles, has an online catalog. We're connected with about 52 different libraries, and so they do get loaned out that way too. Yeah, awesome. All right. Thank you so much. Lots of good information and lots of good questions and interaction. Also, great program. Thank you so much, Kim. We are going to... Thank you. Yeah, thank you for being with us today.