Library Events
What sounds do a red-tailed hawk make? How far can a Bald Eagle fly? How does a raptor come to live at the Iowa Raptor Project? Find out more during our visit with the Iowa Raptor Project, Thursday, June 16th at 6:30 p.m., as we meet some of the raptors and hear their stories. We’ll gather on the patio at the west end of the library for this program.
Thursdays are for brand new BAM POW To Go Kits. Kindergarten-5th graders are invited to pick up weekly fun, at-home activity kits. New kits continue through July 28th. Thursday, June 16th is Build it: Map Adventure.
Ambrosia salad, burgers, cookie desserts and fresh watermelon. What’s your favorite picnic dish to share? Saturday, June 18th at 11 a.m. is your time to shine. Make your favorite picnic dish, and join the Cookbook Club to try something new and swap recipes.
Gather on the library porch with us for singing, rhymes and parachute games at Songs on the Lawn. The whole family is welcome to join us Mondays at 10:30 a.m. through July 25th, no program on July 4th.
Have you dreamed of being an Olympian but love chocolate too much? Now you can do both. Come compete in our chocolate olympics. We’ve got whopper relays and cookie tosses, games and contests galore. Do you know your chocolate well enough to help your team rise to the top? Chocolatey glory awaits. Let the games begin. For teens, incoming 6th-12th graders on Thursday, June 23rd at 2 p.m. on the library lawn.
Please note the library will close at 4 p.m. Friday, June 24th for staff in-service.
Rainbow, brown and brook trout are stocked around Iowa in public streams through Iowa DNR programs. You can learn about fly tying and prepare for a fishing adventure Tuesday, June 28th at 6:30 p.m. Visit our website to sign-up and enjoy a hands on lesson with Ryan Maas and the Hawkeye Fly Fishing Association. This program is for adults and young adults (16+) and registration is required, as space is limited.
What’s new?
The new non-fiction shelves have many new titles, below we’re highlighting a few. Visit the library to browse the shelves or call to place a title on hold.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.
Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris. Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine. As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.
Mean Baby: A memoir of growing up by Selma Blair. The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. With her mouth pulled in a perpetual snarl and a head so furry it had to be rubbed to make way for her forehead, Selma spent years living up to her terrible reputation: biting her sisters, lying spontaneously, getting drunk from Passover wine at the age of seven, and behaving dramatically so that she would be the center of attention. Although Selma went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress and model, she could never quite shake the periods of darkness that overtook her, the certainty that there was a great mystery at the heart of her life. She often felt like her arms might be on fire, a sensation not unlike electric shocks, and she secretly drank to escape. Over the course of this beautiful and, at times, devastating memoir, Selma lays bare her addiction to alcohol, her devotion to her brilliant and complicated mother, and the moments she flirted with death. There is brutal violence, passionate love, true friendship, the gift of motherhood, and, finally, the surprising salvation of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis.