Photo by Sabrina Pankratz Two young girls petting one of the two llamas at the petting zoo at the kids carnival set up outside the Marshall-Lyon County Library Friday.

MARSHALL — Alex Dvorak plans to get her son, Reid, involved in the reading program at the Marshall-Lyon County Library at an early age.

She started on Friday by taking the toddler to the petting zoo at the Kids Carnival set up outside the library as part of this summer’s reading program.

“I do want to get Reid involved, it would be really cool,” Dvorak said, while Reid was busy petting the animals.

“I really like all the animals,” Dvorak said.

“We haven’t gone to the carnival (games), he’s a little young for that yet, but Reid loves the animals and its not animals he sees very often,” Dvorak said.

Hailey Bieber, an employee of the library running the giant tic-tac-toe game said she likes this program because of animals and the community.

“(I like) all the animals honestly, we have a huge petting zoo back there, and we have tons of kids here. It’s just exciting to see all the people come together that we see all the time at the library,” Bieber said.

The pet zoo featured animals including llamas, geese, ducks, bunnies and a horse. Mary Beth Sinclair, the children’s librarian, was holding a goose so that kids could pet it safely.

Sinclair has been running and organizing the children reading program for over 35 years ago and said it’s been around before she started. Sinclair said they try to relate the carnival activities to theme.

“We come up with fun things they can do related to the theme, which was, A Universe of Stories. So, we did a lot of space stuff,” Sinclair said.

Sinclair owns the animals and brings them every year.

“We come up with new activities, and the kids love the animals, so we bring the animals,” Sinclair said.

“The reading program was eight weeks, the actual program is eight weeks. The reading part goes until school starts in September, they can keep reading and earning prizes all through August,” Sinclair said.

She also likes the reading program because it prevents the summer slide and meeting the new families.

“Getting kids to read, to prevent that summer slide. Ya know, just working with kids. I like the families. We always get different families during the summer than we do during the school year,” Sinclair said.