@ Your Library
April showers bring May flowers. I certainly hope the showers are the liquid kind and not the frozen kind, as we need the moisture to allow the flowers to grow. Grow, create and learn! Take time each day, each week to do something that feeds your soul and helps you grow as a human. Explore options until you find the hobbies or activities that nourish who you are. Use the library to help you figure out what those things are. We probably can’t provide everything you need, but we can certainly help to get you started exploring, learning and creating. If your hobbies and interests lean more to the crafty, artsy or homemaking then borrow our Cricut, sewing machines or metal stamping kit to explore and create. Ask about the monthly TakeOut craft available for teens and adults. And if we can’t help you immediately because we hadn’t thought of providing it, maybe we can figure out a way to explore options together.
Stop by the library and take a look at the seed varieties we have available to share with any who ask. Start your own garden in a small pot on your front step, or in a garden, but grow something. We can all use a little additional oxygen and bright green at this time.
Check out our science kits including four new citizen science kits. Measure light in the night sky, observe pollinators, explore biodiversity and hunt for zombees. All provide options for reporting the data gathered to scientists working with the information. We also have kits exploring physics, circuitry and more for a variety of ages and abilities. I found the book Beginners: the joy and transformative power of lifelong learning by Tom Vanderbilt to be a wonderful read with lots of good stories along facts about the power of trying new things throughout our lives. A second book about the value of trying new things is That Sounds Fun by Annie F. Downs, who encourages us all to find a hobby, to learn new things, to do what is fun for each of us.
I just finished The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a light, fluffy story set primarily in the English countryside following World War II. That made me look up the new novel Miss Austen by Gill Hornby about Jane’s sister Cassandra and her relationship to her sister. I am looking forward to reading Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig, a novel about the real-life adventures of a group of women who risk their lives to move to France at the height of World War I to help French villagers by bringing aid and hope.
I am also interested in reading Destined for You by Tracie Peterson, the first in a new series entitled “Ladies of the Lake.” This story is set in 1869, as Duluth and Superior battle for the arrival of the railroad. In other words, plenty of new titles to explore and read.