Schaumburg Library Exceeds Winter Reading Goals

The Beanstack Winter Reading Challenge, in which the Schaumburg Library participated, resulted in a $35,000 reward shared by First Book and certain participating libraries from "Shark Tank" personality Mark Cuban. Beanstack, the library's reading log software company, teamed up with Cuban to create the challenge in an effort to motivate readers and help those in need. The challenge was for participating libraries to read a total of 50,000 books and one million minutes in January. Ultimately, participants logged 84,002 books, plus a remarkable seven million minutes of reading time. Of Cuban's prize money, $25,000 was donated to First Book, a nonprofit social enterprise that provides new books, learning materials, and other essentials to children in need. The remaining $10,000 was distributed to the top-performing libraries. Though not a reward recipient, the Schaumburg Library logged more than 21,000 minutes and 509 books in January.

"We are proud to have been included in this event, and hope to do it again next year," said the Schaumburg Library's Executive Director Monica Harris. "It's a great way to get people reading and contribute to a laudable cause."

Popular books nationwide included Goodnight Moon for preschoolers, the Harry Potter series, Everything, Everything, The Only Road, Origin and A Wrinkle in Time.