ROCHESTER — Though students at Rochester Memorial School are almost a month into school, summer reading efforts are still paying off for students who completed the program, as they got posters, a book, a round of applause from their classmates and extra recess time. 

Rochester Youth Services Librarian Lisa Fuller visited Rochester Memorial on Sept. 20 to explain how the summer reading program worked, congratulate her participants and encourage other students to join the program next year. 

She used the letters S, L, and P to represent the three stages of the program: signing up, logging the tasks that they had done in space-themed “mission logs” to go with the Universe of Stories theme for the program, and participate in the program. 

Students also got stickers for each of the missions they accomplished, adding them to a sticker mural to form an image of an astronaut on the moon. The mural took 4,000 stickers to complete, but the children completed it early and added extra stickers to the title at the bottom of the mural and added star stickers to the background. Fuller estimates that in total they had around 5,000 stickers on the mural by the end. 

Fuller also explained to the students that they could become junior Friends of the library at age 8, and join the library’s new youth book club. 

The librarian also recognized the teachers at Rochester Memorial who helped lead the Tuesdays with Teachers program over the summer: Jamie Alves, Stephanie Cyr, Johnson, Sollauer, and Melissa Weigel.

“A lot of the kids thought it was fun to see teachers outside of school,” Fuller said.

Rochester Memorial’s Principal Derek Medeiros told students that he invited Fuller to the school to “show you how important reading is,” adding that if students keep reading even over the summer they will increase their vocabulary by thousands of words. 

As for Fuller, she was thrilled to be able to make the presentation to the school. 

“It’s always so special, even though I do it every year,” she said, of the presentation.