MISQUAH — The Misquah Public Library opened its summer reading program Monday, though one participant had already finished the part involving bears before the program officially began, setting a tone for the season the librarian describes as “flattering, and a little alarming.”

Brynn Solberg, who completed fourth grade at Oakview Elementary last week, read through the library’s entire “bear” reading level over the long weekend and has been advanced to “wolves,” the next tier up. Children’s librarian Ruth Aune called it “the fastest anyone’s cleared the bears since we started using the animals,” a system the library adopted in 2003 and one she built, she notes, “for a normal pace, by a person who had not yet met this particular reader.”

The program, free for readers from kindergarten through grade six, awards a small prize for every five books and a larger, deliberately unspecified prize to whoever reads the most by the time school resumes in the fall. About sixty children registered Monday, with more expected through June — a healthy turnout Aune attributes partly to the program’s long standing and partly to word having gotten around that the summer’s entertainment includes watching one fourth-grader try to read the building empty.

“I’d just gently encourage everyone to pace themselves,” Aune said, a sentence she will repeat, with diminishing hope, every week until August. “It’s a long summer. There are a lot of bears. There is room for every single child to have a bear.” Miss Solberg, reached at the circulation desk, said she planned to “do the wolves and then see.” Asked about her method, she said she reads “the whole book, not just the talking parts,” an approach Aune endorsed without reservation. The library, in the old Carnegie building on Main Street, has extended its summer hours and will hold a story hour Thursdays at 4 p.m.; donations to the prize fund are accepted at the front desk.