Dec. 3, 2025

Books, Beasts, And Borrowed Time

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Curious how a zoo brings the wild into your local library? We sat down with Andrea Robichaud, education specialist at Riverbanks Zoo and Garden, at the South Carolina Library Association to share how summer reading themes transform into lively, hands-on programs for families. From last year’s exploration of color—how animals signal, hide, and communicate, and how keepers use color to organize care—to this year’s Unearthing a Story, we connect fossils and ancient creatures to the behaviors of modern animals kids can see today.

Website: spotlight4success.com

00:06 - Welcome And Guest Introduction

00:28 - Why The Zoo Is At SCLA

00:47 - Color In Nature Program Recap

01:10 - Unearthing A Story: Dinosaurs To Now

01:28 - Family-Friendly And All Ages

01:37 - Andrea’s Path To Zoo Education

02:32 - Community Outreach And Communications

03:31 - Partnering With Libraries For Access

03:51 - Closing And Thanks

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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.

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I am Devin Pintozi, your host.

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We are here in a wonderful Columbia, South Carolina, at the South Carolina Librarians Association.

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And I am so happy to have with us here Andrea Robichau.

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Thank you for joining us today.

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Thank you for having me.

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Andrea joins us from the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden here in Columbia.

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Andrea, can you uh let me know a little bit about uh the uh the reasons that have brought your organization here to the South Carolina Librarian Association?

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Yeah, so we're here promoting our summer library outreach program, um which we do every summer in accordance with the national reading topic.

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So last year it was all about color in our world, so we did color in our wild world.

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So how animals use color out in nature, but also how our keepers use color to care for our animals.

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We're full.

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So this year it's unearthing a story.

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So all about archaeology, paleontology, dinosaurs, that sort of thing.

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So we are doing a program comparing ancient animals to modern animals and talking about dinosaurs and stuff like that.

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That sounds like a lot of fun.

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Something the whole family can get involved with, yes?

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Yes, definitely.

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We try to gear our program towards all ages.

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Yeah, that's that's great.

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Um, can you tell me a bit about how you got involved with the riverbank zoo and garden?

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Well and what your role is exactly?

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Yeah, sure.

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So the zoo can't really get rid of me.

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I've been uh a teen volunteer, so that was maybe 10-ish years ago.

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I started off doing that uh in high school.

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So then afterwards, I became a summer camp counselor for about three years while I was in college and doing my masters.

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And then uh during my exit interview, I said I would be interested in working uh year-round rather than just for the summers.

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And they reached out to me because a position opened up and I started as a zoo education specialist uh about two years ago now.

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Wow, that's wonderful.

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So you've been with the zoo, you've been a volunteer since your teens, now you're involved in the organization.

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That's that's great.

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Yeah.

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Um, what are some things that uh the zoo is doing to promote everything that it offers?

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Because you know, it offers so much.

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Maybe we want to talk.

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Can you let me know a little bit about what kind of things the zoo is offering the community today?

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Yeah, so we try to reach out to our community in lots of different ways.

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Uh we have advertisements, we also uh post on social media to let people know what's new and updating.

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Um, for our members, we have member magazines, so we send those out with articles about things that the zoo is doing or the direction the zoo is going in.

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Oh wow, that sounds wonderful.

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And uh um okay, and so um can you let us know like what kinds of things uh we can do as part of the Librarian Association, what kind of things the membership can do uh to promote uh your offerings uh through the libraries?

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So, really, we are just trying to go to libraries we haven't really been to before, so we can do our programs there, uh meet audiences we haven't really met before, uh, meet groups that we haven't, just so that we can get lots of people to have the zoo experience that might not get to otherwise just because of distance or travel.

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Oh, okay, that's a good point.

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Um, all right, well, thank you so much.

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Uh again, this is Andrea.

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Andrea Robo show uh with the Riverbanks, Riverbanks Zoo and Garden.

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And we're so happy to have you with us today.

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Yeah, thank you for having me.

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Thank you.

Books, Beasts, And Borrowed Time

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