3.  Responding to the community: the Bookwagon program

The storytent program was created in direct response to what we were hearing neighbourhood children and their parents ask for. Parents wanted their children to have access to help with their reading. Children wanted to read and be read to. We talked to others in the larger community, including the library, and after much discussion a partnership was born.

Within the program there continued to be opportunity to respond to the local community. In large part, locations and other activities that happen in the storytent were responses to requests from children and their parents. In particular, the year-round Bookwagon program is a great example of what can happen when responding to the community remains an important principle.