MISQUAH — It is Friday, August 28, at 2 p.m. at the library, and it is the last thing on this summer’s calendar that has not yet happened.

Forty-one readers — a record class, up from thirty-four — will be called by tier from the bottom up, which is how Ruth Aune has always done it, so that the smallest readers get the room’s full attention while it still has attention to give. Certificates are lettered in green ink. Megan Tollefson reports the capital S situation has been resolved to the satisfaction of the party who raised it.

The ice cream is bought, donated as always, and is being kept in the Northern Tap’s walk-in until Friday morning — an arrangement Deb Pavek offered and which the library accepted on the condition, stated by Tollefson and agreed to by Pavek, that the walk-in’s self-closing latch is now in service. “The bear got the cheese,” Tollefson said. “The bear is not getting the ice cream.”

And the ladder. The blank panel taped above the eagle tier two weeks ago is still blank. What goes there is Mrs. Aune’s decision and Mrs. Aune’s alone; she has confirmed only that it is an animal, that it is not a moose, and that Brynn Solberg is not to guess it, because “she will guess it, and then I will have to change it, and I don’t want to change it.” She intends to draw it Friday, in front of everybody, with a pen she is bringing herself.

She intends to present the top tiers personally. The library has stopped attaching qualifiers to that sentence and this newspaper is going to follow suit. She has been the librarian here since 1994. She taught most of this town to read, including, at the last count anyone bothered to make, a fair number of the people who will be standing in that room Friday holding their own children. Doors at two. Bring a chair if you have one that survived the concert.

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