Read-a-palooza 2024 Celebration!!

Enjoy a dog-friendly fall literacy jamboree with prizes, entertainment, snacks, and book/school supply/dog giveaways. provided by our generous in-kind sponsors!!

Join us on Saturday, October 12 from 10 am to noon at Fred Anderson Park and Dog Park to celebrate our fall reading challenge, Read-a-palooza 2024, meet your fellow readers and event sponsors!  This event is dog-friendly and all pets must be on a leash.  There is a small and a large dog park adjacent to the event area.

Bring your reading tracker so we can recognize your effiorts. All children will receive a new book and we will have some extra books and tickets to the ferris wheel at Navy Pier to give away for folks of all ages!

The first 75 kindergarten - 2nd grade students from SitStayRead Schools will receive a backpack filled with books from our sponsor Crate + Barrel. Extras will go to students enrolled in CPS schools.

Crate + Barrel Reading Nook with storytimes from guest readers (full line up in process):

• Bri McLean
• SitStayRead Staff + Board
• More special guest to be announced soon!

Speaking + Listening Tent - come hang out and interview our dog handlers or read a book to one of our Certified Reading Assistance Dogs

• SitStayRead Dog Teams

Writing + Spelling Games

• SitStayRead Staff + Book Buddies + NEIU Interns

Phantom Phone Booth - Share a Joke or Make Up a Story Over the Airwaves

• Local actors!
• Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology

Raffle! Buy tickets here or on the day.

• Crate+Barrel elements from the reading nook will go home with winners
• Dyson AirWrap
• Poetry Magazine annual subscription and tote
• First Ascent
• More to be announced soon

Refreshments from Lifeway Kefir and Trader Joe's 

Child Dental Kits from Mobile Care Chicago

Pup cups from Sploot Veterinary Services

Dog Frisbees from Just Food for Dogs 

Grain-free, locally sources Barley's Biscuits form Gateway to Learning