On October 21, at our Hartford Board of Education meeting, we celebrated our top-ten readers from the 2025 Hartford Public Library Summer Reading Challenge! (Suddenly, it's October, and we wanted to make sure all our readers and their families had time to RSVP!)
We were so happy to celebrate students from Betances Learning Lab, MD Fox School, Kinsella Magnet School, Annie Fisher Montessori School, Batchelder Montessori, and Environmental Sciences Magnet School at Mary Hooker!
The Summer Reading Challenge is part of our Boundless partnership, a unique collaboration between Hartford Public Schools and Hartford Public Library that began in 2015. Ten years of Boundless!
This year, we had a total registration of 2,259 students who read for 1,201,500 minutes. That’s 20,025 hours of reading! Congratulations to our school with the highest summer reading registration… S.A.N.D. School with 318 students registered! Kudos to our school with the highest summer reading participation, Betances Learning Lab Magnet School with 289 students participating!
This year’s theme, “One City, Many Stories,” beautifully captured the richness and diversity of not only our city — but Hartford Public Schools. Places of learning where different cultures, backgrounds, and experiences come together to create a vibrant, dynamic community. This challenge highlighted and celebrated that diversity, inspiring our students and families to explore new stories, ideas, and perspectives.
We extend special thanks to the dedicated team of HPL librarians who worked to plan the Summer Reading Challenge and all of the amazing organizations who supported the challenge.
Stay tuned for more information about Dr. Andraé Townsel's RUSH Tour (Reading to Uplift Students of Hartford), a boots-on-the-ground literacy movement, in which he personally visits elementary schools to read with our students, celebrate the joy of books, and inspire a culture where literacy is power and reading is fundamental.
Our Top-ten Readers were: from Betances Learning Lab Magnet School, Aryash Gupta, Daelyz Lozano, Darshiv Rana, Aekansh Chavan, and Raahi Chavan; from MD Fox School, Aarya Bhalero; from Kinsella Magnet School of Performing Arts, Sharvil Deokar; from Montessori Magnet at Annie Fisher, Philip Jimenez; from Montessori Magnet School at Batchelder, Vivianna Bathina; and from Environmental Sciences Magnet School at Mary Hooker, Viduran Varunraj. Congratulations to ALL our Summer Readers and their families! Keep on reading. Literacy matters.
