It goes without saying that 2020 has been a very different year for most of us. While many things are different, some things remain the same. One of those constants is that Andover is a community of readers! Despite all of the challenges this summer including navigating curbside services, learning how to use ebooks, and just dealing with the uncertainty of a global pandemic, Andover still smashed our goal of reading 300,000 minutes this summer. We actually read a grand total of 504,612 minutes! To put this in perspective that's about 8,410 hours or 350 days straight of reading. That's a lot of books! 

The really cool thing about Beanstack, the platform we used to run our Summer Reading Challenges, is that it gives us lots of interesting information about what our patrons are reading! We used this information to make an infographic that we posted on some of our social media accounts the other day:

This infographic gives a nice overview but since Beanstack is so powerful we can dig even deeper into our statistics. The below table breaks down the infographic into each age group challenge:

Finally, another really fun feature of Beanstack is that we can see a sampling of some popular books that patrons logged as 'read.' It doesn't necessarily mean that these books are the most popular books read just that they were logged the most. It gives some interesting insight into some of the books our Andover community read this summer. Take a look at the top books read in each challenge and see if you'd like to read them!

KID TOP 11:
Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Ramona Quimby, age 8 by Beverly Cleary
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (made the list twice because of different editions)
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Charlie and the chocolate factory by Roald Dahl
Otherwise known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume
The Jolly Regina by KateLaReau
Ivy + Bean series by Annie Barrows

TEEN TOP 12:
Little women by Louisa May Alcott
Born a crime: stories from a South African childhood by Trevor Noah
We are all made of molecules by Susin Nielsen
The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly
Lost in the Sun by Lisa Graff
Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger
Dork diaries series by Rachel Renee Russell
Rogue by Mark Frost
Masterminds by Gordon Korman
Ranger’s Apprentice series by John Flanagan

ADULT TOP 12:
A discovery of witches by Deborah Harkness 
Shadow of night by Deborah Harkness 
The girl with the louding voice by Abi Dare
Renegades by Marissa Meyer 
The goldfinch by Donna Tartt 
The overstory by Richard Powers  
Persuasion by Jane Austen 
The blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson
One plus one by Jojo Moyes 
The left hand of darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin 
Bringing down the duke by Evie Dunmore 
Becoming by Michelle Obama 
 

Thank you to everyone who read and logged their books this summer! We didn't get to see a lot of you but it is nice to know that Andover was still reading even in interesting times.