Meet the New Blue Jan Sanders, Pasadena’s Library’s Director

Rising to the challenge presented by the 4,088 summer reading participants, Library Director Jan Sanders dyed her hair blue.

Sanders made a grand entrance to a “blue party” on the Central Library patio with a box over her head labeled “guess who?” Summer challenge readers and library staff cheered when she made the reveal.

“Not everyone gets their own bobble head,” Sanders said upon showing off the new hair. “Feels the same from in here.”

With permanent dye, not a rinse, the blue hair will stay until it wears off.

“I hope people get excited about reading and the summer reading challenge and avoiding the summer slide for students. And personally I hope to set a whole new trend in hair color,” Sanders said. “I just thought it would be fun to do something wild and crazy and different.”

The goal was to get 5000 people to sign up for the Summer Reading Challenge, but Sanders dyed her hair anyways to honor the 4,088 who participated this year.

The two assistant City Managers Steve Mermell and Julie Gutierrez also “had to come see the blue hair.”

“While we may not have met our original challenge, we did really well this year and we reached a lot of students. Every little thing we do helps us look at how we might improve the program. The fact that we didn’t quite reach our goal and Jan still went ahead with it makes it very fun,” Deputy Library Director Jennifer Addington said.

Mary Rose Parker joined the adult summer reading challenge and came out to see the effects of the blue hair. Two of her favorite books she read over the summer were The Serpent’s Shadow by Rick Riorden and A Short History of England by GK Chesterton.