It’s the Community Library Sedona’s fifth year being involved with the monthlong SciTech Festival — that happens every February throughout the Verde Valley — but Youth Services Manager Vivian Kraus knows one thing for sure: “Kids are always excited to touch snakes,” she said.

Red Rock State Park rangers visit the library during the festival to talk about reptiles for the “Meet a Snake, Make a Snake” event on Wednesday, Feb. 4.

“It will be an opportunity to learn about native snakes in the Verde Valley, meet a rescued Sonaran kingsnake, handle a variety of educational props, and create some fun craft snakes,” Red Rock State Park Environment Education Ranger Riley Scantlebury said.

Kraus said the snake’s name is Cowboy.

The Verde Valley SciTech Festival has 75 events throughout the region for children to choose between this year. Kids could choose to attend all of them, taking place at the Sedona, Camp Verde, Cottonwood and Beaver Creek libraries, elementary schools, parks and miscellaneous venues.

Kids attending an event earn one button, and to get a prize, they need to turn in at least six.

Science Vortex Executive Director Laurie Altringer said she loves seeing children hovering around the Science Vortex, figuring out if they want a lab coat or a crystal growing kit.

“It’s very fun to see the kids’ sense of accomplishment and pride when they turn in their buttons and get to pick out their prize,” she said. “It’s always fun to see how long they take to pick out their prize.”

“It is part of a bigger statewide festival run through SciTech Institute in Phoenix, and they are celebrating their 15th year of the festival, and we are celebrating at least our eighth year,” Altringer said. “But it is our sixth year having the festival in this format where we have a calendar of events.”

Other festivals throughout the state are not a month long nor do they have as many events. The calendar and full list are available at sciencevortex.org/vvscitechfestival2026.

The Cottonwood Public Library’s calendar is filled with upward of 20 events throughout the four weeks part of the festival.

“We always have story time, we always have family craft, we always have programming for tweens and teens, but in the month of February, we devote as much of our programming as possible to being science themed,” Cottonwood Public Library Youth Services Coordinator Danielle Ave said.

Story times are on Thursdays at 10 a.m. and family crafts are Fridays at 3:30 p.m.

Events at the Sedona library are also tweaked from its ongoing programs.

Calendars specific to Community Library Sedona are available in person at the library and on its website.

“Having February focused on science is fun, because everyone takes their own spin on what they’re doing already,” Kraus said.
For example, the teen class “Cooking with Kimberly,” on Friday, Feb. 13, will be an experiment on temperatures and making ice cream.
“Some people don’t realize they’re doing science, but they are,” Kraus said.

While the festival runs throughout February, the kickoff event, which will be the biggest one with the most organizers and volunteers, will take place at the Science Vortex at Cottonwood Community School on Saturday, Jan. 31.

“We are going to have over 20 STEM organizations with tables and hands-on activities,” Altringer said. “We will have a planetarium that Meteor Crater is bringing, set up in the gym with shows every 20 minutes. We will have a ‘science is fun’ show with [Science Vortex] Chief Science Officers with liquid nitrogen and dry ice.”

A radio station and food trucks will also be present for the kickoff event.

“We’ll be there, making paper helicopters,” Kraus said of the Sedona library team.

She said she likes that there’s a way for all the organizers to be in one place at the same time.

“We have a very strong STEM ecosystem,” Altringer said. “… SciTech Institute said that this is the biggest festival that they have statewide, the Verde Valley, beating Maricopa.”

Camp Verde Community Library Children’s Librarian Letticia Ancira said, while the ecosystem is strong, it still needs to be nurtured in children’s education.

“I, as a children’s librarian, have partnered with this event because it’s important, and because I want to do something for the kids in my community,” she said.

The event she’s most looking forward to is the “Create an Animal or Plant” event the Camp Verde library will host on Thursday, Feb. 19, from 4 to 5 p.m.

She said she hears kids talk about creating characters and surroundings in videogames and thinks it will be the perfect event for them.

Ancira, who translated the calendar and all the event descriptions into Spanish, said the wide variety made her wish she had more of this when she was younger.

“I got to read the different events,” she said. “So I’m like, ‘I even want to go to some of these.’”

The festival is organized by the Verde Valley STREAM Council, which stands for Science, Technology, Research, Engineering, Art and Math.

“It started actually as a grant funding organization, they were part of a greater National Science Foundation grant, and so that’s how Verde Valley STREAM Council began,” Altringer said. “But now we don’t have funding, but we it’s just made up of passionate STEM Educators from a number of different organizations, and we meet quarterly throughout the year.”

Events throughout the Verde Valley cover all of these from meeting and learning about local snakes from State Park Rangers to cartooning different science-related topics.

“I’ll try and steer the kids to drawing science related things; this usually will involve robots and space aliens as they’re always fun to draw,” wrote Sedona-based cartoonist Jan Marc “The Janimal” Quisumbing, the CLS scheduling coordinator. “Maybe we’ll draw Albert Einstein too. Actually, we probably will. I’ll be doing the same at Cottonwood Public Library.”