prizes

Announcing our Summer Reading Adventure Prize-Winners!

Stephen Clothier 0 Comments

The winners themselves have known for a couple of weeks, but the day has finally come — it’s time for us to publicly announce the Grand Prize winners of the 2023-24 Summer Reading Adventure!

Of course, everyone who took part is a winner in some way — whether you won badges, books, stationery, vouchers, or just the eternal respect and admiration of your peers, your fearless ventures into the Land of Literature have not gone unrewarded. In fact, during the Summer Reading Adventure, our librarians gave out 2,270 prizes to intrepid word explorers across our fair city.

Some of these prizes came along with another, hidden prize — the opportunity to put your name in the hat to win one of the Grand Prizes. There were 10 Grand Prizes up for grabs in total — four for kids, three for teens, and another three for adults. Our lucky prize-winners are listed below:

Kids

Grand Prize #1 – Into the Wild

Winner: Natalie, age 8, from St Benedict’s School and Tari-kākā | Khandallah Library

Prize description:

  • 1x family pass to Staglands Wildlife Reserve and Cafe
  • 1x family pass to Zealandia Te Māra a Tāne
  • 1x family pass to Wellington Zoo
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Grand Prize #2 – Science and Wonder

Winner: Michelle, age 6, from Wadestown School and Ōtari | Wadestown Library

Prize description:

  • 1x family pass to the Wētā Cave Workshop Experience
  • Activity books from Te Papa Press
  • A NeoBear AR Globe
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Grand Prize #3 – Ultimate Artistry

Winner: Alin, age 12, from St Catherine’s College and Ngā Puna Waiora | Newtown Library

Prize description:

  • A selection of high-quality artistic stationery from Gordon Harris
  • A NeoBear AR Globe
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Grand Prize #4 – Books and More!

Winner: Abhirup, age 9, from Amesbury School and Waitohi | Johnsonville Library

Prize description:

  • A Summer Reading book bundle from Gecko Press
  • A voucher for Unity Books
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Teens

Grand Prize #5 – Books, Books, Books!

Winner: Rebecca, age 15, from Wellington Girls’ College and Waitohi | Johnsonville Library

Prize description:

  • A voucher for Unity Books
  • A voucher for a VIP experience at Te Pātaka, the site of our Central Library collection
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Grand Prize #6 – Artistic Endeavours

Winner: Penelope, age 13, from Waitohi | Johnsonville Library

Prize description:

  • A voucher for Gordon Harris Fine Art Supplies
  • A voucher for 3D printing and lasercutting services at Tūhura | The HIVE in Johnsonville
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Grand Prize #7 – Games and More

Winner: TJ, age 15, from St Patrick’s College and Te Awa-a-Taia | Ruth Gotlieb (Kilbirnie) Library

Prize description:

  • 20x tokens for experiences at Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe
  • 1x family pass to the Wētā Cave Workshop Experience
  • A voucher for Cerberus Games and a set of artisan gaming dice
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Adults

Grand Prize #8 – Books and Blockbusters

Winner: Doreen from Te Awa-a-Taia | Ruth Gotlieb (Kilbirnie) Library

Prize description:

  • A voucher for Unity Books
  • Double pass to Light House Cinema movie screening
  • A voucher for a VIP experience at Te Pātaka, the site of our Central Library collection
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Grand Prize #9 – Cultural Capital

Winner: Alex from Waitohi | Johnsonville Library

Prize description:

  • Double pass to a show at Circa Theatre
  • Double pass to a show presented by the Wellington Footlights Society
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Grand Prize #10 – Sonic Wonderland

Winner: Moriah from Te Awe Brandon Street Library

Prize description:

  • Double pass to a concert in Orchestra Wellington’s The Story season
  • Selection of recent CD releases from Rattle Records
  • Assorted locally-made goodies, including chocolate!

Massive congratulations to all our winners!

Thank you as well to all of our wonderful sponsors for their support of this year’s Summer Reading Adventure. In no particular order: Ben & Jerry’s Wellington, Circa Theatre, Gecko Press, Light House Cinema, Office Max NZ, Orchestra Wellington, Rattle Records, Read NZ Te Pou Muramura, Staglands Wildlife Reserve and Cafe, Unity Books, the Wellington Footlights Society, Wētā Workshop, Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe, Zealandia Te Māra a Tāne, and Wellington Zoo. Ngā mihi to you all for helping us help you keep reading over the summer!

But most of all, thank you and congratulations to everyone who took part! As we’ve noted before, you have positively blown our socks off with your reading and we couldn’t be prouder of you all. See you for the next Adventure!

Read Books, Earn Pizza!

Stephen Clothier

Love pizza? Love reading? Then boy, do we have the deal for you!

The famous (or infamous) HELL Reading Challenge has returned for another year, and from now until the end of January 2024, Hell Pizza will give you one free kids’ pizza from their 333 menu for every seven books you borrow and read from the library.

Sounds too good to true? We understand your scepticism, but just trust us. We’d never lie to you about books. Or pizza!

So how does it work?

The next time you go to your local library, ask the friendly librarian for a pizza wheel. They look a bit like this:

A circular card divided into seven segments, each of which has a space to be stamped by a librarian. once seven segments are stamped, the card can be redeemed for one free 333 kids' pizza at any Hell Pizza store.

All those books just waiting to be read; all those pizzas just waiting to be eaten!


Whenever you issue a book from the library, ask the librarian to stamp and sign one segment of your pizza wheel. You can have one segment of your wheel signed for each book you read from the library! Our librarians absolutely love talking to you about the books you’ve been reading, so make sure you come to the desk prepared to talk about bookish things.

Once you have all seven segments of your pizza wheel stamped and signed, the librarian will finish it off with the Master Stamp (One Stamp to rule them all, etc.), and then take the completed wheel to any Hell Pizza store and exchange it for one free 333 kids’ pizza. It really is that simple!

The Fine Print

There are some important rules we all need to follow in order for you to participate in the Hell Pizza Reading Challenge:

  • You must be in Years 1-8 at school to participate in the Challenge
  • Pizza wheels will be valid to redeem at any Hell Pizza store until 31 January 2024
  • Pizza wheels must be redeemed in person — you can’t do it over the phone or online!
  • There’s no limit to how many pizza wheels you can earn across the year, but Hell Pizza will only redeem one wheel per child per visit. So you can’t stockpile 10 pizza wheels and get 10 free pizza wheels all at once

We know many of you will have started your 2023 HELL Reading Challenge journey already — but for those of you who haven’t, it’s never too late to start! You can pick up and sign off pizza wheels at any of our 14 branches across the city. Last year, Wellington City Libraries kids racked up over 15,000 free pizzas as part of the HELL Reading Challenge — that’s well over 100,000 books read! Can we beat that number this year?

A special thank you to Hell Pizza and the New Zealand Book Awards Trust for their generous support of this initiative.

Happy reading, everyone! 🙂

Announcing the Summer Reading Adventure 2021-22 Champions!

Stephen Clothier

The day is finally here! You’ve waited very patiently, and now it’s time for us to announce the Grand Prize Winners of the 2021-22 Summer Reading Adventure.

Of course, everyone who took part is a winner in some way — whether you won badges, books, stationery, vouchers, or just the eternal respect and admiration of your peers, your fearless ventures into the Land of Literature have not gone unrewarded. In fact, during the Summer Reading Adventure, our librarians gave out 3,578 prizes to intrepid word explorers across our fair city.

Some of these prizes came along with another, hidden prize — the opportunity to put your name in the hat to win one of the four Grand Prizes. When all was said and done, we had nearly 10,000 names in the four Grand Prize hats. Out of those honourable 10,000, the following lucky four names were drawn:

Grand Prize #1 — Into the Wild

Winner: Charlotte, age 8, from Redwood School and Tawa Library

Prizes:

  • 1x Family Pass to Zealandia
  • 1x Family Pass to Wellington Zoo
  • Assorted goodies, including books and chocolate!

Grand Prize #2 — Science and Wonder

Winner: Sophia, age 6, from Sacred Heart Cathedral School and Johnsonville Library

Prizes:

  • 1x Family Pass to the Space Place
  • 1x Capital E voucher
  • Assorted goodies, including books and chocolate!

Grand Prize #3 — Artistic Aspirations

Winner: Felix, age 9, from Seatoun School and Miramar Library

Prizes:

  • 1x Family Pass to Hilma af Klimt: The Secret Paintings at the City Gallery
  • A selection of high-quality artistic stationery from Gordon Harris
  • Assorted goodies, including books and chocolate

Grand Prize #4 — Books, Movies and More

Winner: Pia, age 10, from Wa Ora Montessori School and Karori Library

Prizes:

  • 5x tickets to Light House Cinemas
  • $50 Unity Books voucher
  • Assorted goodies, including books and chocolate

Massive congratulations to all our winners!

But most of all, congratulations to everyone who took part! As we’ve noted before, you have positively blown our socks off and we couldn’t be prouder of the kids of Wellington and your incredible reading prowess. See you for the next Adventure!

Sophia, age 6, proudly holding her bag full of prizes in front of the main desk at Johnsonville Library

Sophia from Sacred Heart Cathedral School and Johnsonville Library

Charlotte, age 8, standing with a broad smile and a bag full of prizes in front of a row of colourful shelves containing children's books.

Charlotte from Redwood School and Tawa Library


Pia, age 10, standing next to a staff member at Karori Library, proudly holding her bag full of prizes

Pia from Wa Ora Montessori School and Karori Library

Read Books, Earn Pizza!

Stephen Clothier

Love pizza? Love reading? Then boy, do we have the deal for you!

The famous Hell Pizza Reading Challenge has returned for another year, and from now until the end of January 2022, Hell Pizza will give you one free kids’ pizza from their 333 menu for every seven books you borrow and read from the library.

Does it sound too good to be true? We thought you might think that, but trust us: we’d never lie to you. Especially when it comes to books and pizza.

So here’s the deal:

The next time you go to your local library, ask the friendly librarian for a pizza wheel. They look a bit like this:

A circular card divided into seven segments, each of which has a space to be stamped by a librarian. once seven segments are stamped, the card can be redeemed for one free 333 kids' pizza at any Hell Pizza store.

All those books just waiting to be read; all those pizzas just waiting to be eaten!

Whenever you issue a book from the library, ask the librarian to stamp and sign one segment of your pizza wheel. You can have one segment of your wheel signed for each book you read from the library! Our librarians love to talk to you about the books you’re reading, so come to the desk prepared to talk about bookish things!

Once you have all seven segments of your pizza wheel stamped and signed, the librarian will finish it off with The Master Stamp, and you can take the completed wheel to any Hell Pizza store and exchange it for one free 333 kids’ pizza. It really is as simple as that!

Rules:

  • You must be in Years 1-8 in order to participate in the Challenge.
  • Pizza wheels can be redeemed at any Hell Pizza store until 31 January 2022.
  • There’s no limit to how many pizza wheels you can earn across the year, but remember that Hell Pizza will only redeem one pizza wheel per visit per child! So you can’t stockpile 10 pizza wheels and get 10 free pizzas all at once.

We know lots of you have already started your 2021 Hell Pizza Reading Challenge journey already — but for those of you that haven’t, it’s never too late to start! You can pick up and sign off pizza wheels at any of our 14 libraries across the city! Last year Wellington City Libraries kids racked up nearly 15,000 free pizzas as part of the Hell Pizza Reading Challenge — that’s over 100,000 books read! Let’s see if we can beat that number this year!

Happy reading, everyone! 🙂

Read, review and win prizes

admin

Have you heard of our online book club for kids? It’s really simple to join in.

All you need to do is write reviews of the books you are reading and you’ll automatically win prizes for your reviews.

You’ll get a prize after your first 2 reviews, then every 5th review from then on. There are extra cool prizes saved for those who write thoughtful and outstanding reviews.

Have you ever had anything published online before? All reviews are published on our website for everyone in the world to see, and we think that’s pretty cool. We’ve even had some authors commenting on the reviews written about their books.

To join in you have to be aged between 5 and 12 years old and have your own Wellington City Library card. You can find the Kids’ Club by clicking on the logo on the right-hand side of this blog.

Happy reviewing!