Interim Director Susan Autio said the activities were picked to fit this year’s theme, “Connect to Your Local Library.” The activities help highlight everything the library offers. The traditional book collection is augmented by movies, CDs and even video games. It also hosts a range of community activities.

“They come in and read the newspapers or magazines, or use the public computers,” she said. They may never even check books out… it’s not just a traditional library anymore. None of them are. It’s more of a community center, I think.”

To get children to explore the library, there will be weeklong scavenger hunts for pre-K and grade school. Younger children will look for items such as a book, fish tank and reading tree. Older children will have more complicated tasks, such as using the card catalog to find a book about bugs.

Children can also enter a contest to guess how many books are in the library. The three closest guesses will win a prize.

Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Children’s artwork is seen as part of the Portage Lake District Library’s National Library Week celebration.

“It’s always funny, because whenever you have a guessing game with little kids, it’s either there’s 11 books in the library, or a billion,” she said.

A space in the children’s section has been set aside to display artwork by kids, who can draw their favorite book cover or character.

From 2 to 3 p.m. Tuesday, the library will have cake, conversation, and music with Steve Jones.

Wednesday, the library will show the movie “Julia” from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The documentary explores the life of culinary legend Julia Child.

Saturday will see two activities. From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., children can decorate a cloth book tote with their own designs. The Copper Country Recycling Initiative will also hold a worm composting workshop from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. People can bring a recycled, washed container such as yogurt or coffee containers. The CCRI will provide each person a handful of red worms to start.

Autio said the week is a good way to bring people of all ages to the library. People are starting to come back to the library in greater numbers, including in-person events, she said.

“It seems like with the mask mandates changing and the numbers going down, it just seems like people are ready to come back,” she said. “So it’s really exciting for us, just a celebration — ‘Hey, come on back to the library, and we’ll have some events for the kids to do.'”