“Living things in the library encourage reading. They certainly provoke questions and conversations with patrons.”That quote from Kate Capps, children’s librarian and school liaison of the Olathe Indian Creek Library in Kansas, is one that I—and many other librarians—would tend to agree with, based on the number of programs nationwide that encourage kids to read to or with animals.

Emerging reader books (call them early or easy, that’s a discussion for another article) have come into their own since the Geisel Award was first presented in 2006 and the success of series like Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie.But learning to read independently is a daunting challenge—quality books are just one of the tools librarians across the country are employing to help children master this critical milestone and develop a lifelong love of reading. What are libraries doing, beyond the book, to help?