We’re going year-round with our reading challenges! Now you don’t have to wait for our Summer Reading Program to have fun, “level up,” and earn badges and prizes for reading! You can do it all year long through the Beanstack reading platform.
Beanstack allows you to create an account online, add all of your family members who are participating, sign up for appropriate challenges, and log all of your reading through the web or via the Beanstack mobile app.
If you signed up with Beanstack for the 2023 Summer Reading Program, you’re already set up and ready to go. Just sign in to your Beanstack account and select a new challenge.
Current challenges
Winter Reading Challenge 2025: Be a Reading Machine
Ready, set, READ! We encourage readers of all ages to challenge themselves to become reading machines this winter. From Jan. 1-31, the Bryan + College Station Public Library System is participating in “Be a Reading Machine,” a reading challenge sponsored by Beanstack and Baker & Taylor.
We challenge our community to read and log at least 300 minutes during the challenge. For logging your minutes read, you will earn fun, new badges. The top-performing libraries and schools will even win special prizes.
Make sure you log all your reading by Jan. 31 to be eligible for a completion prize. Completion prizes are available while supplies last until Feb. 15.
- Dates: Jan. 1-31, 2025
December Holidays Reading Challenge
Most people know about Christmas in December, but what about the other holidays? Take this challenge and learn about other holidays celebrated in December! Read 5 books that match up with one of the 16 different holidays listed:
National Cookie Day, National Sock Day, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, National Brownie Day, National Poinsettia Day, National Day of the Horse, National Guard Birthday, National Violin Day, National Cocoa Day, Monkey Day, Wright Brothers Day, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year’s Eve.
Make sure to log your reading by December 31 and pick up your completion prize by January 15.
- Dates: Dec. 1-31, 2024
1,000 Books Before Kindergarten
The concept is simple, the rewards are priceless. Read a book (any book) to your newborn, infant, or toddler. The goal is to have read 1,000 books (yes you can repeat books) to your precious one before they start Kindergarten.
If you want some help with picking good books to read to your child, check out our “1000 Books” collection located at Larry J. Ringer Library or online and borrow one of our “book backpacks.” There are 10 books in each backpack and we have 100 backpacks to choose from. Once all 100 backpacks are read (in no particular order), the challenge is complete and you’ll get a certificate, five free books at the next Friends of the Library Book Sale, and your picture put up on our “Wall of Fame.”
- Dates: Ongoing
Read the Classics
Get swept away in the classic tales that helped shape literature as we know it, and discover timeless stories that capture humanity through the ages. Log your reading to earn badges throughout the challenge. Books are counted from the time you register, so you can reread the classics. Ages 14 and up. The challenge starts Jan. 1.
- Dates: Ongoing
