We have some good news and some not so good news about our very popular annual town wide Spelling Bee. First, the not so good news: It is with great regret that we have to announce that we will not be able to hold the Bee in 2013. This is mainly because we currently have fewer volunteers than are needed to take part in the months-long planning and preparations. We understand that this will be disappointing for children and their parents. For the past two years, we have been thanked by many people for running the event and told what a good thing it is for Edison. We are also conscious of the fact that we have gained a degree of momentum and canceling the Bee was not a decision we took lightly.

The good news is that we have not given up on the Spelling Bee. The Friends of the Edison Public Library hope to bring back the competition in 2014, and make it even better than past Bees. We’ve already had some ideas to improve it, and we will continue discussions. As a reminder to you that we haven’t forgotten, we’ll still be including our fun Spelling Bee words feature in The Friends Pages of The Library Letter, the quarterly newsletter you can pick up at Edison’s libraries.

If we’re to hold the Spelling Bee in 2014, we need your help. The day itself involves a lot of work by our wonderful volunteers; however, many more hours of work are needed in order to plan and prepare during the several months leading up to the day of the Bee. Some of the aspects of the advance planning include: the venue and its facilities; word list creation and review; publicity, including designing, producing flyers and distributing them to schools; reviewing the rules of the event; prizes; obtaining sponsors; registration; organizing the registration packets for contestants; volunteer management; planning the timeline for the day; creating the program; writing scripts for the MC; and post-event publicity. We are planning to hold an event, similar in format to a job-fair, where anyone interested in helping us can learn a little about what we need, then find out more details about any areas in which they have an interest. Watch this space for an announcement. If you think you could spare even a little time to help us with some of these tasks, please e-mail us at FOLEdisonNJ@gmail.com or call Graham on 732-738-4586.

Division 2 winners (from L-R): 1st Ashwath Subramanian, 2nd Dayashree Baskaran and Vanessa Hu respectively.

2012 Division 2 winners (from L-R): 1st Ashwath Subramanian, 2nd Dayashree Baskaran and 3rd Vanessa Hu respectively.

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