Busy Teen Finds Time for Library, Children

Each Tuesday, Plum Community Library volunteer Holly Vizino helps as the library staff shares a story with its Tiny Tots program attendees. But that isn’t the only story Liz Kostandinu, the library’s children’s programming coordinator, likes to share.

She’s also happy to tell about how the 18-year-old volunteer—the only young volunteer to help out at the library year-round—stepped in to help with story time during its summer reading program.

That is the library’s busiest time of the year, Kostandinu said.

“Holly embraced her new duties enthusiastically and has become a favorite of our youngest patrons,” she said.

The Tiny Tots program includes up to 25 2-and-3-year old participants, and their parents, grandparents and guardians.

At the time that she was asked to step up and help out with the library’s children’s program, Vizino was doing typical volunteer duties such as shelving books and pulling requested books from the shelves for patrons.

When Kostandinu asked if Vizino would like to assist with the Tiny Tots last year, the teen jumped at the chance.

From then on, she’s been greeting children and their parents, helping them sign in, giving them name tags and preparing materials for crafts—such as the colorful construction paper bits she carefully cut out as children and parents filtered in for story time on a recent morning.

“This is right up my alley,” Vizino said. “I’ve always loved libraries and it’s kind of cool to be behind the scenes.”

If the Plum teen is enthusiastic about her library duties, it might have something to do with a love of books that was instilled at an early age.

Vizino said that she and her sisters, Heather, 15; Heidi, 13; and Hannah, 12, all share a love of reading imparted to them by their parents.

“My parents always loved to read to me,” she said, adding that her mom makes a list of different genres of books for Holly and her siblings—are all homeschooled—to read throughout the summer.

“I’m always surprised by what I end up liking,” Vizino said. “It’s never something I would have picked for myself.”

In addition to volunteering each Tuesday at the library, Vizino said she stays active in her church, First Reformed Presbyterian in Penn Hills. She participates in a girls’ Bible study, helps out in the nursery and is involved in the youth group.

She also is a ballet dancer and has studied dance since the third grade.

In the fall, Vizino will begin a new chapter in her life, attending Geneva College in Beaver Falls.

There, she’ll study communications with a concentration in writing. She hopes to one day work as a proofreader and editor.

Though she’s sorry to see Vizino go, Kostandinu said the future looks bright for the teen she describes as her “star volunteer”.

“The children and I will miss her when she sets off for college, but we know that she will succeed at whatever she sets out to do."