Summer at the township library can be appealing to teens and young adults, who have more time to read and participate in activities outside school extracurriculars.
Among the offerings they’re attracted to is the library’s after-hours programs, held about three to four times a year.
“They’re really special because they’re after the library’s closed,” explained Jasmine Riel, teen services librarian, of the programs. “It’s just us and a couple staff members and it creates a very unique experience for them in the library.”
While some of the programs are planned by Riel, most are created and planned by the library’s teen advisory board, an exclusive group of volunteers who have to apply and interview for their place on the board. The most recent after-hours program, on June 27, was a themed escape room planned by member Amelia Siegel with a certain movie in mind.
“She came up with it entirely herself,” Riel noted. “So she planned it. She wanted to do it. She said to me, ‘Jasmine, I want to do the next after-hours program and I want it to be “Hunger Games” themed …’ So she planned everything herself.”
The escape room was originally planned for April, but put off because of construction on the library’s upper level, where the children and teen sections are located. Riel worked on finding the June date so the teens didn’t have to wait for fall.
“We knew the ‘Hunger Games’ would be a big hit,” Riel noted, “especially with the new movie coming out (in 2026). And especially over the summer, when teens and kids have more time to read, the most popular series, like ‘The Hunger Games,’ ‘Twilight’ and stuff like that tend to be checked out all the time.”
Inspired by Suzanne Collins’ “Hunger Games” books, the escape room had a variety of puzzles with answers that involved trivia and knowledge from the novels. If accurate, each answer gave the two teams a new clue.
“We know teens love those books,” Riel pointed out. “So it’s pretty easy to create an escape room that will hook them and make them want to come.”
After completing a puzzle, the teams found a volunteer to check their answers so they could get clues for the next one. Puzzles included searches of words and names inspired by the industries in the “Hunger Games” series.
“She (Siegel) designed it in a way so that they had to complete as many of the puzzles around the library as possible to be able,” Riel said, “to get the most clues to be able to solve the final puzzle.”
Siegel tested her escape room with friends in advance to ensure its difficulty level was appropriate and that it would engage participants. Riel had prizes ready for the participants at the end, including necklaces and stickers inspired by “The Hunger Games.”
Riel emphasized the importance of and impact of teens planning their own programs.
“It’s different when a teen runs a program for teens, as opposed to me as an adult running a program for teens …” she observed. “There is a very special connection between a teen leader and teen participants that I really try to embrace and create opportunities for that kind of special connection as much as possible,”
The next after-hours program will take place in August and be themed around the movie “Night at the Museum.”
