As a nation Bermudians like to travel, and most try to spend at least some time in another country every year.

For the young armchair traveller, there's a special agency — the Bermuda Youth Library. From June 30 to August 23 this year, the librarians escorted young visitors on an Olympic tour of sorts.

Visiting the Taj Mahal, exploring Mount Rushmore, traipsing through the villages of Italy, story time, crafts, first aid (instruction provided by the Bermuda Fire Service), movie days, gymnastics, beach volleyball, international cooking and mini Olympic games, were some of the things that over 1,200 of Bermuda's young people participated in as part of the Youth Library's Reading Olympics this summer.

In all workshops, library books were available for the children to read more about the topic at their leisure.

Young travellers four to 11 years of age were provided with a 'passport' in which they recorded their personal details and the details of their 'travelogue'.

Working around an Olympic track with 12 points, they recorded 11 books they read on a variety of topics, including fairy tales, mysteries, sports and biographies.

The twelfth point required the completion of an activity sheet such as a crossword or colouring page. Completion of all twelve tasks made the young people eligible for a certificate, gift bag and gold medal.

The Reading Olympics also involved daily activities. Each activity was well-attended, with many programs having a waiting list. Attending any of the workshops could also be credited towards completing reading logs which saw over 100 children eligible to receive their gold medals, reading certificates (donated by Argus Insurance) and goody bags.

One of the over-subscribed programmes turned out to be the Olympic Village programme that saw over 30 children each Friday travel to a country that was participating in the Olympics.

Countries visited were China, Bermuda, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, India and the United States.

There were guest speakers from these countries who shared with the children information about the culture, language, music, government and daily life of their country.

The food for these events was most graciously given by Chopsticks, Brunswick Street Bakery, La Trattoria, Jamaican Grill, Rosa's Cantina, and House of India restaurants.

Six-year-old Iannah Caines, signed up to the programme by her Mum, was "a bit happy" to be there. The visit to Mexico made quite an impression as, "We hit open a piñata. Me and my Mum picked up lots of candy and took it home in a bag."

The visits to China and Italy made a less positive impression: "I didn't really like the food," was her comment.

However, for Marie Sophie Brackstone, the trip to India was a highlight, as her school friend from St. George's Preparatory has gone to India to live, and Marie-Sophie wanted to learn more about the country her friend had moved to.

The seven-year-old enjoyed visiting Italy and Mexico in particular. "It's fun," she noted. "You try new food and play fun games." And once again the piñata was a hit.

Also popular was the Thursday morning sports programme in which a particular Olympic sport was discussed and demonstrated by a representative of its Bermuda association.

The children loved the gymnastics presentation (Kaisey Griffith), fencing (David Semos), soccer, (Island Soccer League, Karl Roberts), volleyball (Katarina Carnicka), Fitness (Melanie DeRosa), Martial Arts (Shawn Harvey) and Table Tennis (Myron Piper). Jorj Dublin, not particularly interested in story time "not when it's not school", was, however, taken with the sports activities, especially the karate and table tennis.

He conceded that if you liked to read, there was time to read a book while waiting for the activities to begin, but the main drawing card for this particular young man was, "We got to eat food."

Middle and high school children were encouraged to read and review five books in order to be eligible for the grand draw at the end of summer. Samuel Bailey (Dellwood), Jordan Renfroe (Berkeley) and Daylon Smith (Saltus) all won 80GB iPods for their efforts.

The librarians are grateful to all sponsors, schools, parents and people from the community who gave of their time, energy and resources to help make the summer programme a success!