The Summer Reading Program is one of the most popular programs that we support at The Santa Clara City Library. Summer Reading started in libraries as a way to keep students’ literacy skills up while they were on break from school – reading as few as six books during the weeks off school can stop the summer slide in literacy skills.

Summer Adventure is the name for Summer Reading 2023 at the Santa Clara City Library, emphasizing both reading and the fun, active side of summertime!

Get all of the current summer reading resources at the Library’s website.

KeyPoint Credit Union, Mission City Community Fund, Intel, the Jan Lieberman Concert Fund, and Enterprise Holdings Foundation regularly sponsor this program. The Friends of the Library also sponsor this program.

Summer Reading 2024 Sponsorship Opportunities

Please reach out to JoAnn Davis to learn more about sponsoring the 2024 summer reading program.

Comic Con 2024

The Santa Clara City Library is gearing up to host the biennial Santa Clara City Library Comic Con. This is a community comic book and cosplay festival held on October 12, 2024 at Central Park Library. In past years, our single-day Comic Con has had between 6,000 – 8,000 attendees. The Library team transforms the 36,000 square-foot Central Park Library into a free comic con, redefining literacy-based events for our community.

Comic Con’s purpose is to inspire our community to get excited by new genres of reading and art and to enjoy the Library in a new way. It has something for everyone!

If you or your company is interested in sponsoring this event, please reach out to JoAnn Davis for opportunities.

Comic Con 2023 – Comic Con Lite!

in 2023, the Santa Clara City Library presented Comic Con Lite: A month of Comic Con activities. They celebrated reading and imagination via the comic book medium at all three of our libraries by bringing together Bay Area artists and makers. Patrons enjoyed panels, workshops, crafts, and vendors and were inspired by creators of art, comics, and films over the month of October 2023.

Comic Con 2022 Recap

Comic Con is a beloved day at the library, usually in the fall. The Central Park Library transforms into a huge gathering of beloved characters and stories. It regularly gets over 6,000 visitors in one day.

The last Comic Con was on Saturday October 22, 2022. Everyone had a great time!

We also have stats for you!

Comic Con has been sponsored by AMD in the past, and is also funded by the Friends of the Library.

Health and Wellness Programs

2023 Program – Healthy You, Healthy Me

Healthy You, Healthy Me will take a holistic approach toward nutrition and healthy diet by having workshops and professional demonstrations at each of our libraries by local chefs and nonprofit partners on incorporating fresh, whole foods into our daily lives. Our series of events will address topics of

• wellness through nutrition,
• food security, and
• sustainability.

We will also hold sessions on food empowerment through a diverse program of cooking classes, nutritional education and access to quality resources aimed to engage all ages including families, teens and our older adult population.

The program will include 5 different program types across all three library branches. Sessions will include:

• themed story times for children;
• healthy cooking family demonstrations,
• make your own baby food demo,
• teen healthy eating demo and
• healthy aging workshops.

We would like to thank Kaiser Permanente for being a Healthy Community Sponsor of this program!

Healthy You, Healthy Me Sponsorship Opportunities

If you or your organization would like to sponsor the Healthy You, Healthy Me program, the following levels are available:

$10,000 – $15,000 Title Sponsor
$5,000 – $9,999 Healthy Community Sponsor
$1,000 – $4,999 Wellness Sponsor

Please contact JoAnn Davis if you or your organization is interested in sponsoring the Healthy You, Healthy Me program.

Ongoing Health & Wellness classes, events, and resources

Our long partnership with Kaiser Permanente has resulted in great support of Health & Wellness resources at the library, from exercise and cooking classes, to books about mental health, and even to a Mamava breastfeeding unit to give nursing mothers privacy, if they want it.

The Foundation & Friends has provided support to the collection – which is anything you can check out with your library card. We have bought books, but we also buy things like chromebooks and hotspots to help bridge the digital divide.

We have gotten support for the genre fiction collection, specifically the Science Fiction books and Romance books. A huge thanks to the Romance Writers of America and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association for supporting our collections!

We would like to thank the Rotary Club of Santa Clara, Rotary Club of Silicon Valley Star, Intel, and the Friends of the Library book sales for their support of the collection.

Literacy, ESL (English as a Second Language), and Read Santa Clara

Current Fundraising Focus: ESL and New Citizenship Support

Almost half of Santa Clarans are foreign-born and more than half speak a language other than English at home. The library needs $10,000 over the next two years to fully support their programs to support everyone in their community.

Donate today to support ESL programs and New Citizenship materials! Please make sure to note that you want your donation to support these programs when you make it. If you are part of a business or corporation looking to help fund these programs, please reach out to our executive director at director@lovethelibrary.org.

Specifically, these funds will support:

• building up the ESL and literacy volunteer support system
• refreshing the language-learning and citizenship materials
• training volunteers and staff to better support ESL-related programs
• continuing existing programs

Read Santa Clara

The Library hosts a suite of programs to help people improve their literacy skills. Read Santa Clara is the largest and most established, and it reaches people where they are: in the library, but also in schools, in shelters, and during the pandemic, online at home. It hosts both family programs and one-on-one tutorial sessions, and it is the organization that coordinates Career Online High School.

ESL Clubs

They also host many English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. ESL Conversation Club allows people from all kinds of backgrounds to get together once a week to use their English in casual conversation; they learn about American customs and make new friends in addition to practicing their language skills. ESL Book Club is like a traditional book club, except it’s designed for people who don’t speak English entirely fluently.

The above photo is our Youth Services staff reading to families at the Family Resource Center in Santa Clara in April 2022. This event was part of the Día de los Niños/Día de los Libros celebration that takes place most years during April. The library brings story times to underserved populations, often in Spanish. There are crafts and the bookmobile comes so people can get library cards and check out books. We co-sponsor these events with the California State Library and the Southern California Library Cooperative.

We would like to thank the Friends of the Library, Mission City Community Fund, Union Pacific Foundation, National Center for Families Learning, Helen Brewer Trust, the Intel Corporation, and more for their generous support of these programs over the years.

Children’s, Teens, and Parenting Programs

People often rediscover the library when they have children, so it’s no surprise that one of the biggest set of programs we support is classes, events, and resources for parents, children, and teens. This includes everything from software to help run reading programs to buying furniture for the Nadler Caldecott Collection to support for 1000 Books Before Kindergarten.

Book Launch

The Santa Clara City Library Foundation and Friends is proud to support the upcoming launch of Francisco Jimenez’ graphic novel, The Circuit. Come to see the author talk and have an opportunity to buy a signed copy of the book! He’ll be at the Central Park Library on Tuesday March 26, 2024 at 5:30pm.

About Francisco Jiménez:
Author and educator, Francisco Jiménez emigrated from Tlaquepaque, Mexico to California and as a child worked alongside his parents in the fields of California. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Santa Clara University. He has won several national literary awards, including the John Steinbeck Award, the Boston Globe- Horn Book Award, the Américas Award, the Pura Belpré Honor, and the Tomás Rivera Book Award among others. His four-book series—The Circuit, Breaking Through, Reaching Out, Taking Hold–has been included in the American Library Association Booklist‘s 50 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.

Teen Library Internships

The Foundation and Friends is assisting the Santa Clara City Library in administering a grant from the California State Library to offer teenagers internships at the Library. These teens help with both the Summer Reading Program and support the homework help center at the SCUSD Family Resource Center. You can learn more about the program on the Library’s website.

Lunch at the Library

The Foundation and Friends is once again helping administer the Lunch at the Library grant from the California State Library at Mission Library. We are getting more details about exactly what activities this grant will be supporting – stay tuned for details!

After-school programs

The library needs $15,000 annually for the next two years to fully implement their after-school programs. Their goals are to improve what’s called social-emotional learning – aka helping kids get along with each other – and helping to improve literacy.

Donate to support these programs, and make sure to specify that you want the donation to go to children’s programs when you make your donation. If you’re with a company or business looking to support children’s literacy, tech skills, and  social skills, please reach out to our executive director at director@lovethelibrary.org to learn more.

Specifically, these funds will be used for:

• supplies for after-school art and craft classes at all three libraries;
• book clubs for children and teens
• continuing the homework help center started with a grant from the California State Library
• bringing a reading pals program to the library to connect teens with younger children to improve literacy
• bring after-school STEAM classes back to the library.

Past programs the foundation has supported

My First Book Club is a monthly class that focuses on improving your student’s literacy skills. The Youth Services department works with literacy experts to craft lessons focusing on specific skills shown to improve reading skills.

We sponsor the STEAM Lab series of programs put on by the Youth Services department; these classes help those aged 7+ learn more about science, technology, engineering, art, and math.

Programs for families are supported by Friends of the Library, Texas Instruments, and more.

Adult Classes and Events

We are proud to support classes and events for adults, like author talks, career development classes, and other fun events like cooking classes and craft nights.

State Parks Grant

The Foundation and Friends is helping the Santa Clara City Library administer a grant from the California State Library, in partnership with the California State Parks, to get people out into nature!

With this program, you can check out day-use parking passes for the State Parks and take classes about outdoor topics, such as tick safety.

These new resources, combined with the hiking collection, the Santa Clara City Library has what you need to have for a safe and and rewarding time at one of California’s State Parks!

Other Classes and Events for Adults

We support a wide range of classes and events for adults at The Santa Clara City Library. In the past this has included Read 22 in 2022, Author Talks, Job and Career classes, Cooking classes, and Craft nights.

Job and Career classes often include resume help, how to use LinkedIn effectively, how to communicate at work, and more.

Keep an eye on the Library’s calendar to find these and more classes and events as they happen.

All of the Library’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) classes, events, and resources, are aimed at helping people access these types of resources who wouldn’t otherwise have access to them.

These programs are supported by KLA-Tencor Foundation, Soroptomists, AMD, the Yahoo Employee Foundation, and the Friends of the Library.