Cooke County Library offers weekly class of stories and songs for young children

Families in Gainesville and across Cooke County can bring young children to a weekly class at Cooke County Library. Each session mixes stories and songs with a craft, according to the City of Gainesville's official event calendar. The city's Aug. 19, 2026, listing refers to the weekly class. The library's own planning documents show a weekly story hour as far back as 2012.

The listing does not name an instructor. The same entry describes the library's monthly bilingual storytime, which uses the same stories, songs and craft. The city calls that program a fun, educational class.

The library gave its reasons for the program in April 2012. Library director Jennifer Johnson-Spence wrote a community outreach plan that listed a weekly story hour among the services the library already offered. The plan set a goal to keep the story hour going, to draw children toward books and learning.

The American Library Association gives similar advice to parents. Its Every Child Ready to Read toolkit teaches caregivers five habits that build language and early reading skills from birth to age 5. Reading and singing are two of the five. Talking, writing and play are the others.

Later records also show the class on the schedule. A 2015 Texoma Council of Governments guide advertised free summer sessions at the library on Tuesday mornings from early June through late August. Toddlers up to age 4 did one set of activities, and children 5 to 10 did another. The city's archived calendar lists a 10:30 a.m. session on July 27, 2021.

A University of North Texas speaker biography from January 2023 named Kimberly Reiter as the library's associate director and coordinator of children's classes. The biography does not say who leads the sessions today.

Other libraries in the region run similar programs. Sanger Public Library holds storytime every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Its website warns that schedules can change. The library says all its programs are free, but many require registration. In June 2026, Sherman Public Library's StoryTots sessions offered stories, songs and fun to children up to age 5 and their caregivers. Each Wednesday session was repeated on Thursday.

Nationwide, attendance at public library programs more than doubled from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2023. It was still about a quarter below the fiscal 2019 level, according to an Institute of Museum and Library Services presentation. Those numbers include all library programs, not only children's classes.

The county the library serves is growing. Census Bureau estimates show that Cooke County's population grew about 7% from 2020 to mid-2025. The bureau's 2020-2024 estimates also show that about 15% of residents age 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home.