The Great Pumpkin Decorating Contest is right around the corner.
Pick out your pumpkin (8 inch diameter or smaller) and get it all dressed up for the contest. This is some creative fun for all-ages, just remember don’t carve your pumpkin! We’ll begin accepting your entries Wednesday, October 1, and the final day to enter is Saturday, October 18.
Pick up a copy of the rules at the Library and start creating.
If you’d like some help with the process, join us for an all-ages Pumpkin Painting Party Saturday, October 11, at 10:30 a.m. and enter your creation or take it home to enjoy for the season.
Library Programs
When you have ideas, we want to hear them! We’re holding an open Teen Advisory Board Tuesday, September 30, at 4:45 p.m. for any teen (6th-12th grades) to share their ideas for programs at the Library. As always, we’ll have snacks! Join us in person or via Zoom to share your ideas and help us plan future fun!
We’re pleased to welcome back curator and storyteller Doris Montag for another engaging presentation in her popular History of Ordinary Things series. This time, Doris turns her attention to the fascinating—and sometimes funny—history of men’s hair and shaving traditions. In her program, Men & Their Hair: A Story of History and Artifacts of Barbering, Doris will showcase an extensive collection of shaving artifacts dating back to the 1800s, including straight razors, leather strops, shaving cups, and soaps. She will also trace the evolution of grooming through King Camp Gillette’s invention of the safety razor and the mechanical strops of the early 1900s. Don’t miss this presentation Thursday, October 2, at 10:30 a.m.
Little ones benefit from spoken words, rhymes, and play time to build pre-reading skills. Join us for Fall Baby Time Mondays at 9:30 a.m. in October. We’ll gather at the Solon Community Center, 313 S. Iowa St., to sing songs, nursery rhymes, and play time. Stick around after Baby Time to enjoy free entry into Tot Time with our friends at the Community Center. Baby Time is ideal for little ones, 0-36 months, and their caregivers. Siblings are always welcome!
Get creative and learn something new with DIY Night each month!
Tuesday, October 14, at 6:30 p.m. we’re getting our Halloween spell books ready. Learn to craft and alter old books or a journal to create a spooky decoration for the season. DIY Night is intended for adults and young adults (16+), registration is required.
Teens can join us for Mask Making Monday, October 13, at 3:30 p.m. as we continue to get into the spooky season. We’ll use craft materials to create our own masks and get creative. Teen programs are for 6th-12th graders, no registration required.
Continuing with the Halloween theme in October we’re hosting a Haunted Library Escape Room Wednesday, October 29. Register your team (3-8 people) for a 30-minute timeslot to see if you can work together to solve the clues and escape the monsters! We’ll also have crafts and activities available for registered teams and walk-ins from 3-6:30 p.m. This escape room is intended for all-ages, visit our website calendar to register for a timeslot.
Library Access
Regular Library hours are Monday-Thursday, 9:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. and Friday-Saturday, 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed Sundays. Please always refer to our website calendar or call to check hours as weather may impact our ability to be safely open.
We’re open Friday, Sept. 26, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Everyone is welcome at the Library and our programs. Please contact us with access needs.
What’s New?
From astronauts to witches, and libraries to robots…There’s something for everyone in the new fiction titles. Check out a new book during your next visit.
The Book of Lost Hours by Hayley Gelfuso. Enter the time space, a soaring library filled with books containing the memories of those who have passed and accessed only by specially made watches once passed from father to son–but mostly now in government hands. This is where eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in 1938, waiting for her watchmaker father to return for her. When he doesn’t, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her. As she realizes that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories. Until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself.
The Ephemera Collector by Stacy Nathaniel Jackson. The year is 2035, and Los Angeles County is awash in a tangelo haze of wildfire smoke. Xandria Anastasia Brown spends her days deep in the archives of the Huntington Library as the curator of African American Ephemera and associate curator of American Historical Manuscripts, supported by an array of AI personal assistants and health bots. Descended from a family of obsessive collectors who took part in the Great Migration, Xandria grew up immersed in African American ephemera and realia: boots worn by Negro Troopers during the Civil War, Black ATA tennis rackets, bandanas worn by the Crips… Although Xandria’s work may preserve collective memory, she is losing a grasp on her own. Evren, her new health bot, won’t stop reminding her that her symptoms of long COVID are worsening; not to mention that severe asthma, chronic fatigue, grief, and worrying lapses in reality keep disrupting progress on a new Octavia E. Butler exhibition, cataloging the new Diwata Collection, and organizing the Huntington against a stealth corporate takeover. Then, one morning a colleague Xandria can’t place calls to wish her a happy birthday–and the library goes into an emergency lockdown. Sequestered in the archive with only her adaptive technology and flickering intuition, Xandria fears that her life’s work is in danger–the Diwata Collection, a radical blueprint for humanity’s survival. Up against a faceless enemy and unsure of who her human or AI allies truly are, she must make a choice.
To The Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage. Spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back encompasses Steph’s turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her: her sister Kayla, an artist who goes on to become an Indigenous social media influencer, and whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; Steph’s college girlfriend Della Owens, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her Cherokee family through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and Hannah, Steph and Kayla’s mother, who has held up her family’s tribal history as a beacon of inspiration to her children, all the while keeping her own past a secret.
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna. Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her Guild. Now she (slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps Jasmine run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests’ shenanigans, tries to keep said talking fox in check, and longs for the future that seems lost to her. But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power…