Cooke County Library holds weekly class for children

Each week, children at Cooke County Library in Gainesville can hear a story, sing with the group and make a craft, according to the city of Gainesville's official calendar.

The city's listing for Aug. 19, 2026, refers to the weekly children's class and describes those activities. It does not say who leads the sessions now.

The idea behind the class appears in the library's own planning. A community outreach plan written by Jennifer Johnson-Spence and dated April 23, 2012, named a weekly children's story hour as one of its objectives for getting young people interested in books and learning.

Public records show the class has run in some form for years. The Texoma Council of Governments' 2015 summer guide advertised free Tuesday morning classes at the library from early June through late August, with one set of activities for toddlers and preschoolers and another for school-age children up to 10. Gainesville's archived calendar also lists a weekly children's class at the library on July 27, 2021.

A University of North Texas speaker biography from January 2023 identified Kimberly Reiter as the library's associate director and children's class coordinator. That record does not establish who teaches the class today.

The library also holds a Spanish and bilingual storytime once a month. The city's August listing names Ms. Og and Ms. Itzel and describes a similar mix of stories, songs and crafts. Census Bureau survey data for 2020 through 2024 show that roughly one in seven Cooke County residents age 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home. That figure does not single out Spanish speakers or measure interest in the program.

Reading aloud and singing with young children are two of the five practices the American Library Association teaches caregivers through its Every Child Ready to Read initiative. The others are talking, writing and playing, and the initiative aims them at language and prereading skills from birth through age 5.

Libraries in neighboring towns run comparable programs. Sanger Public Library's March 2026 listing describes a Wednesday morning storytime for children 5 and under, with older siblings welcome. Sanger says its programs are free, though many require signing up and schedules can change month to month. In Sherman, the public library scheduled StoryTots sessions with stories and songs for young children and their caregivers in October 2026, with no registration or tickets required.

Texas has backed summer reading programs at libraries since 1958, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Across the country, median attendance at public library programs of all kinds fell between fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2023, according to an Institute of Museum and Library Services research brief.

Cooke County had an estimated 44,461 residents in July 2025, up nearly 7 percent from the Census Bureau's 2020 base.