Storytime for infants program at Batavia Library

Nancy Schmidt was passionate about getting children off to a good start in reading.

Work on a children's reading skills couldn't start too early, she believed. And it was important to make them feel reading could be fun and exciting.

So the early-learning specialist persuaded her employer, the Batavia Public Library, to add a storytime for infants to its lineup.

She also developed take-home literacy kits - bags filled with books, games, CDs and more to teach kids their ABCs, colors, shapes, how to count, and identify sequences and patterns. Toddlers thought they were having fun using the bags; they didn't know each theme was a skill set important to learning to read.

"Her passion was early literacy - to make sure infants and toddlers got good reading skills established," as a foundation for success later in school, said Joanne Zillman, youth librarian.

Sunday, that passion will be remembered during the dedication of a triptych and Nancy's Reading Cottage to the five-year employee, who died of cancer in October 2007.

The ceremony is at 2 p.m. at the library, 10 S. Batavia Ave.

The whimsical triptych is inspired by the philosophy of children's book author Mem Fox of Australia, an early literacy advocate whose work Schmidt used and admired, including one of Fox's 10 Reading Commandments: "Spend at least 10 wildly happy minutes every single day reading aloud (to your child.)"

The cottage is a more permanent version of "The Quiet Lodge" she and her father, Leo McKenna of Oswego, came up with for a summer reading club program. The new cottage was built by McKenna and Nancy's brother, Steve McKenna of Batavia. A child can curl up in there to read by himself, with a friend or a parent.

Linda Doyle of Mundelein created the triptych. It was paid for by donations to the library in Schmidt's memory. The McKennas donated the new cottage.