Plant Personalities | Summer Reading 2026

The 2026 Summer Reading Theme was Plant a Seed and Read. I was tasked with creating personified plants for the Youth Services Librarian to turn into collectable pins for the kids participating in Summer Reading. Wanting to help educate kids on the wonderful world of plants, I decided to base the characters on a variety of different plant species, including some the library-goers would likely be unfamiliar with. I also wanted to include some plants on the endangered species list as well as an extinct one. Ultimately, I ended up creating characters for the Venus Fly Trap, Corpse Flower, Sigillaria, Saguaro Cactus, Spider Plant, Birch Tree, and Oak Tree.

In addition to creating the characters for the pins, I wanted to educate and get kids interested in plants. In order to do this, I compiled information on each plant to be displayed on the youth services bulletin board. Each character sheet included the species’ scientific name, who it was named by, its’ status, size, and environment. I also included a polaroid style image of each plant.