Snowed-out book sale rescheduled

The Friends of the Litchfield Library book sale has been rescheduled to Saturday, January 25.  Visit the library's meeting room from 10-2 to shop for a wide variety of used books!

A book event and a book sale for Watercade week

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

It’s Watercade week in Litchfield, and that means a couple of things for the library this year.  One is true every year: on Saturday we have the Watercade book sale.  The special thing this year is that we have artist Art Norby giving a presentation at the library on Wednesday afternoon. 

On Wednesday, July 10, at 2 p.m. in the meeting room, artist and Litchfield High School alum Arthur Norby will give a presentation about his latest novel and autobiography.  Norby is well known as a sculptor and painter.  He has been sculpting for 40 years, creating over 600 sculptures which include more than 15 large-scale public bronzes.  He designed the Minnesota Korean War Veterans Memorial, as well as public sculptures in Spicer, in Willmar, in the International Peace Garden, and all over the country.  Art operated the Norby Gallery in Arizona for a decade starting in the mid-90s.  He still paints and sells his artwork.  He will have copies of his books available to purchase at the program.  The program is funded in part by Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. 

The Watercade book sale is the largest sale the library has each year.  Many people are familiar with this one because some of the book racks and tables are set up in front of the library, and you can see it from Art in the Park.  Half of the sale is set up inside the meeting room, so plan to come inside to browse even more; cashiers will be inside, too.  Saturday’s sale will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

The Watercade sale has the biggest selection of all of the Friends of the Litchfield Library’s book sales.  What many people don’t realize is that the Watercade book sale is only one of six book sales at the Litchfield Library every year.  The Friends hold a sale in the library meeting room every other month on the third Saturday of the month, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.  The upcoming dates are September 21, November 16, and January 18. 

On every sale, you’ll find things for kids and adults, with generally much more selection for adults.  Most items are donated by members of our community.  Some are things that have been withdrawn from the library collection because they haven’t been checked out in a long time, and we’ve needed to make space for new things.  The book sale is mostly that – print books – but you’ll also find some books on CD, music CDs, and movies on DVD. 

Other than the book sale and Art Norby’s book talk, regular library programs continue this week.  Storytimes happen on Wednesday and Friday morning.  Brickheads will build with Legos on Thursday night.  And on Saturday afternoon at 1:30, the teen program will be experimenting with green screen special effects using masks.

The summer reading program continues until the end of August, so you can stop by with the kids anytime to turn in their reading logs and claim their prizes.  We’ve gotten some great donations from KLFD, Family Fare, Casey’s, Pizza Ranch, McDonald’s, and the Friends of the Library, so there are many nice prizes to choose from, and more will be coming.  By the time the parade passes by on Saturday evening, though, the library will be closed, so stop in before 5:00, or during the week. 

Have a wonderful Watercade!

Celebrate Watercade with the library!

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

The Saturday of Watercade is bringing all kinds of excitement to the Litchfield Library.  The book sale, an art stand, a teen program, and an honor for our children’s librarian are all on deck.

The annual Friends of the Library Watercade book sale will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 9.  The Friends hold a book sale every month, normally on the third Saturday of the month from 10-2, but in July it’s moved up to coincide with Watercade.  And it’s the big one.  As long as the weather cooperates, the fiction will be outside in front of the library.  The nonfiction will be inside the meeting room, and the cashiers will be in the lobby.  Stop over to get lightly used books for a very low price, including books about outdoor sports, Christianity, and crafts, as well as many other topics.  All proceeds benefit the library!

This year we have a special art event on the Saturday of Watercade, too.  A streetcorner letterpress is going to be on the lawn in front of the library from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.  This stand allows people of all ages to print postcards from a variety of papers, images, and colors.  Three 100-year-old letterpresses produce 4x6 postcard-style prints with the push of a lever.  Participants are invited to print their own postcards with images customized for our area.  Whether prints are taken home and framed, put on the fridge, or mailed to a friend, they are worth saving.

Pioneerland Library System is sponsoring this letterpress event as a part of a tour of four unique art programs this summer from ReadyGo!, a project from Springboard for the Arts.  ReadyGo! events use artist-designed mobile tools to spark interaction. 

The streetcorner letterpress will also be in Dassel on Labor Day and in a number of other towns in our library system through September.  Another ReadyGo! stand, a mobile sign shop, will be at a number of libraries including New London and Spicer in July.  A mobile drawing station called One Another will be in Hutchinson on Friday, September 16 and in Willmar the next day.  The complete schedule is available in a brochure at our library.

This project is funded in part or in whole with money from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.  There is no charge for you to come and participate in these art projects, so stop over on Watercade Saturday to make a print of your own. 

We have a program for teens on the second Saturday of each month and any time there’s a fifth Saturday, as well.  This month that falls on Watercade Saturday, too.  Since we’ll have the letterpress here, Margaret will be bringing the teens outside to try it, and she’ll have other activities for them, too.  Ages eleven  to eighteen are welcome to come at 1:30 to join in the fun.  There’s no need to sign up in advance.

And finally, we are so proud of our children’s librarian Jan Pease on being selected as this year’s Watercade grand marshal.  With 25 years of service at the library, she has had a positive effect on so many young people in this community and continues to do so every day.  You can wave to her in the Watercade parade Saturday evening.   Have a wonderful celebration!

Happy Watercade!

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Happy Watercade!  Litchfield’s most exciting time of year is here, and the library will be joining in on Saturday. 

The Friends of the Litchfield Library hold their biggest book sale on the Saturday of Watercade every year.  This year that is July 11.  They do hold a book sale on the third Saturday of each month other than July, but the Watercade sale is the most well-known, with the most traffic.

The Watercade sale will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.  This year some of the books will be outside in front of the library, but most will be in the air conditioned comfort of the library meeting room.  The selection will be much bigger than it is during the regular monthly book sales.

Proceeds from the sale go to the Friends of the Litchfield Public Library, which helps to fund library programs and resources.  Recently the Friends sponsored a program for kids and teens to read down their library fines.  They help pay for craft supplies for story time, books for Beginners’ Book Club, supplies and prizes for the summer reading program, and prizes for the adult winter reading program.  Sometimes they fund special additions to the library collection, such as a boost to our children’s DVD collection in recent years.

The Friends have recently decided to provide a new resource for our library called Book Page.  If you’ve visited the Hutchinson library, you may have seen it there.  It’s a monthly book review magazine that tells readers about the best new and upcoming books.  If you’re always looking for something new and wonderful to read, you’ll want to pick up a copy; we will be getting many because they’re intended to be taken and kept by library patrons and book store customers.  We should start receiving Book Page by the beginning of August.  In the meantime, you can read the whole thing by going to their website, bookpage.com, where it’s available for free.  It looks fun and useful!

The other exciting thing we have going on at the library during Watercade Saturday is our teen programming for ages 12-18.  We’ve gotten something really fun called a Makey-Makey kit. In fact, between the Grove City and Litchfield libraries, we have four of them, purchased in part with teen programming grant money for our region.  Makey-Makeys are called “invention for everyone science kits.”  Electronic components in the kit hook up to a computer and just about anything else that can be turned into controllers or keyboards: bananas, Play Dough, pencils, coins… anything that can conduct electricity.  To see this in action, visit the Litchfield Public Library Facebook page, where our teen programming librarian Margaret posted some pictures and video from the last session on June 15.  The preteens and teens who have worked with this have had so much fun.  Come to the children’s department at 1:30 to do some inventing and plan to be done around 3:15. In fact, if you can’t make it by 1:30, drop in later.  You don’t need to sign up ahead of time.

The library will be a very busy place all day on Saturday.  We will not, however, have our Saturday story hour that day since the Kiddie Parade is happening at that same time.  Walk over from Art in the Park any time after 10 a.m. and join in the Watercade fun at the library.  

Wine & Cheese is tonight, cookbook extravaganza on Saturday!

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

The library has two events this week for the food and drink lovers in the community.  One is a wine tasting to benefit the library, and the other is our book sale, which will feature a cookbook extravaganza this month.

The Litchfield Public Library Foundation is hosting a wine, cheese, and chocolate-tasting fundraiser tonight, Thursday, March 19.  This event will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Litchfield VFW on East U.S. Highway 12.  

Those who attend will be able to sample 34 high-quality wines, plus three non-alcoholic wines, and nine regular and non-alcoholic beers and ales.  Bruce Cottington will be providing seven types of cheese to sample.  Edward Jones will be providing chocolate. 

The event will feature an exhibit of black and white photography by local artist Robert Wilde. 

The Foundation will also offer a silent auction with items from many local businesses.  The list so far includes donations from Peter’s on Lake Ripley, Parkview Grille, Carlito’s, Swan’s Café, Dairy Queen, Litchfield Natural Food Co-op, Stockmen’s Nursery, Prairie Drifter Farm, Open Sole Yoga, Cricket Meadow, and Rodan + Fields consultant Heather Guyan, plus Jackie Zender and NFL player John Carlson.  We are so grateful for their generosity.

Tickets can be purchased at the door, at the library or liquor store, or from library board members for $20 each.  All proceeds benefit the library’s Foundation, which is a nonprofit that supports our local library.

For those who want to pursue their food and drink interests at home, our next book sale will be a good place to stock up.  This month’s sale will feature a huge selection of cookbooks.  The Friends of the Library book sale will be held Saturday, March 21, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the library’s meeting room. 

There will be cookbooks by celebrity chefs, cookbooks from cultures around the world and around regions of the U.S., and books filled with quick and easy recipes.  The sale will also offer cookbooks featuring special ingredients, such as cheese, meat, game, fish, berries, and vegetables.  Books about coffee, tea, beer, and wine will be available, as well as cookbooks for special diets. 

The March book sale will also feature a 25 cent special on vintage mysteries.  The usual wide variety of books and movies will be part of the sale, as well.

Proceeds from this sale always benefit the Friends of the Litchfield Public Library, another nonprofit organization that supports our local library.  Library Friends groups are like booster clubs for school activities or auxiliaries for hospitals, which may help you to understand the difference between our Foundation and our Friends group.  We are grateful to have both!

Join us for the events this week and enjoy the finer things in life.  As Julia Child said, “People who love to eat are always the best people.”

Santa Claus came to town!

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Santa visited the library on Thursday, December 4, at 6:30 in the evening.  He was very popular!  Mrs. Pease stopped counting people at 207 and she thinks she must have missed a few who came in the door.  That may be our record for the largest number of people to come to an event at the library. 

The whole children’s department was full of excited young faces.  Mrs. Pease led them in chanting “Santa! Santa!” before the man himself emerged from the back room of the library, ringing his jingle bells. 

Santa sang his own version of “Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer”.  He read the book Is It Christmas Yet? by Jane Chapman.  Then the crowd divided up to make Christmas crafts and eat cookies in the meeting room or to take turns telling Santa what they want for Christmas.  Even with the huge crowd, everyone was very patient and polite in waiting their turn.  We have such nice families here. 

We did see new faces in the crowd, as well as library regulars.  We even set up a number of new library cards that night.   If you were visiting the library for the first time but had your hands full with little ones, stop back another day to apply for library cards and take another look around.

We're down to our last few storyhours of the month.  On Wednesday, December 10, we'll have our baby and toddler storytime at 10:15.  On Friday, December 12, we’ll have our preschool storyhour at 10:00.  And on Saturday, December 13, we’ll have our 2^nd Saturday storyhour at 10:00, as well.  Mrs. Pease is planning on holiday themes for those.  Then we’ll take a break from storyhours until January, since the holiday season is such a busy time.

We will be holding our monthly family movie night on Monday, December 22, at 6 p.m. in the children’s department.  We’ll be showing a kids’ Christmas movie about an army of elves.  It’s rated G and it’s just a little more than an hour and a half long.  Call the library if you’d like to know the name of the movie.

The monthly Friends of the Library book sale will be held on Saturday, December 20, from 10 to 4, with potential gifts for all ages.  Most of what we have for sale is donated by members of the community, and there really are some nice books and movies available.

The library will be closed on December 24 and 25 for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  We will be open our regular hours the rest of that week.  We will close at 5 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and be closed on New Year’s Day.

Thank you to all of you who came to our Santa event and made it such a success.  We wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Limited service at the library today

If you're having trouble logging into your account or getting onto our catalog, it's not just you! There is an outage in Willmar, and our computer program where your library account lives and our catalog are unavailable. 

If you come in with your library card to check out something you can find on the shelf or that you have waiting here on hold, we can do that.  We are not able to look up your account, order anything, create library cards, or accept fines.

Internet access here at the library is still available but slow. Our IT department is working to solve the problem as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!

Our book sale and genealogy workshops are still happening today.

Book sale today

Our Friends of the Litchfield Public Library book sale is today, 10-4.  There is a huge selection available, with carts loaded up and extra carts added.  You can find many romance paperbacks for your summer vacations, plus a nice group of books on animals and nature.  As always, we offer adult hardcover and paperback fiction and nonfiction, children's books (for only 10 cents!), and many VHS movies.  Stop in and find some fantastic deals!

Library news: The book sale, a donation, a mini-museum, and St. Patrick's Day

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Our library has a used book sale every month on the third Saturday.  I’ve been hearing that people don’t know that we have a sale, other than the one held during Watercade.  Some local residents are big fans of the sale; the crowd outside the door when we open on book sale Saturday sometimes looks like Black Friday.

People donate books, movies, and music to the library all year long, and we sometimes discard library books and other items that we no longer need in the library collection.  This all leads to quite a number of things to sell each month.  The Friends of the Litchfield Public Library organize the items for the sale, and the Women’s Study Club work as cashiers at the sale.  The proceeds benefit the Friends group, which in turn benefits the library. 

This month we have many health and fitness books available to help you with your Litchfield Lite goals.  We always offer a wide range of fiction and nonfiction books for adults and children, plus VHS movies and a few cassette audiobooks.  Sometimes you’ll find DVDs and CDs. 

In other library news, you may notice something new on the wall in the children’s department.  We have a beautiful new bulletin board, donated in memory of Sylvia Altmeyer.  Our first display is Dr. Seuss.  It’s been fun to see how the bright, lively bulletin board display has caused a sudden demand for our Dr. Seuss books!  We will put our summer reading displays on it and all kinds of children’s book promotions.  We’re so grateful for this lovely gift.

Another memorial donation the community has been enjoying is the display case near the library’s front desk.  Pam Dille loaned us her collection of pewter snowflake ornaments this past month, set up in a beautiful, northern lights-style display.  The Jericho Historical Society in Jericho, Vermont, issues one ornament each year, each one a reproduction of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley’s historical photographs.  Bentley was a pioneer in the study of snow crystals.  He began photographing snowflakes with a camera and microscope in 1885, discovering that no two snowflakes were alike.  He captured over 5000 images in his lifetime.  The picture book Snowflake Bentley, about his life and work, won the Caldecott Medal in 1999.  

Do you have a unique collection you’d like to show to the community in our display case?  The case locks and has adjustable glass shelves.  If you think you’d like to share your collection for a month or so, stop in to look at the case and talk to me or Linda about whether it would work for the library.  Past displays have included antique and collectable buttons, custom-made toy soldiers from Germany, and a historical display on the origins of our library.  Think of it as a small museum display, and maybe you’ll think of something you’d like to showcase.

One final library news item for the week: Mark your calendars for Minnesota author Erin Hart’s visit to our library a month from now.  She will be here on Thursday, March 14, at 7:00 p.m.  Her husband Paddy O’Brien is an Irish musician who will perform Irish traditional music on accordion.  We’ll have a fun St. Patrick’s Day event just a few days before the holiday.  This is a Legacy-funded event and it is free for you to attend.

Our Busy, Bustling Library

by Beth Cronk

The library is back in full swing after the holidays. Story times, book clubs, and game nights have started up again. We have toddler story time on Wednesdays at 10:15 a.m., family story time on Thursdays at 7 p.m., and preschool story hour on Fridays at 10 a.m.

Book clubs
After-school book club for grades 3-5 meets at 3:15 on the second Thursday of each month. Middle school book club for grades 6-8 meets at 3:15 on the third Thursday of the month. Mystery book club for adults meets on the third Wednesday of the month at 7 pm. And Emmaus book club for seniors meets at 1 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month in the basement activity room at Emmaus Place.

Game night
Game night is every Monday night at 6:30. Next Monday, January 23rd, we’ll be having a role-playing game night. I’m expecting that it will be Dungeons & Dragons, since I know my family is bringing an old set in that night, but please bring along any role-playing games you’d be interested in playing. My fourteen-year-old son thinks D&D is fun, despite that fact that computer games can do the same kind of thing for you with graphics now. If you used to play back when it was big, or if you’ve ventured into the current sets that are still coming out, come join us. It’s not much time to allow for that kind of gaming, but we can at least find out if there’s any interest in setting up a Saturday event sometime.

The following Monday night, January 30th, we’ll have a Wii Sports night. I’ll move the Wii into the meeting room for the occasion. If you’ve wanted to try our Wii but didn’t want to do it out in the middle of the children’s department, come that evening to give bowling, baseball, or golf a try. Even my dad who never plays computer games has enjoyed Wii Sports.

Manga class
Another fun activity we have coming up is a manga drawing class for ages 13 and up. Manga is a distinctive Japanese comic style. Our class will meet on three Tuesdays: January 24 and 31 and February 7, from 3:30-4:30. Sign up with us soon, since space is limited. This arts opportunity is funded by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment.

Book sale
Our book sale takes place on the third Saturday of every month. Our next one is coming up this Saturday, January 21st . I’d like to thank the Litchfield Women’s Club for being so generous with their time by cashiering at every sale, and I’d like to thank all of you who donate books, videos, and audios for us to sell.

Ebooks
Our virtual library is really hopping since the holidays, too. Practically all of our ebooks are checked out currently because so many of you got ereaders and tablet computers for Christmas. You can always request an ebook to be put on the waiting list, and then you will get an email telling you when it’s available for you to download. We will be buying more ebooks in the coming year than we did this past year. Every day at least one person stops in the library for help getting started with their ereader, and we do our best to help. The difficulty is that there are so many different products on the market that we haven’t necessarily had personal experience using the one you have. Sometimes it takes a combination of our knowledge from the library side of things, customer support from your device maker (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.), and just some time that you spend playing around with it. Usually it gets much, much easier once you learn to use it in the first place.

We have just added a new section to our Overdrive website that you can find on the bottom left corner of the webpage. Older books that are out of copyright and in the public domain are available to download even without a library card, without any limit on the number of titles, and without any need to return them. These are books such as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Anna Karenina. I found a whole bunch of Zane Grey books on there for a patron who wished we had more Western ebooks available.

Our library is a bustling place every day. Every now and then someone out in the world comments to me that the library must be such a relaxing place to work.  After I've managed to hold back a chuckle, I tell them that it's actually a really busy place to work.  If you haven’t been here in a while, come in and see what all the commotion is about!

Many family activities at the library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

We have a flurry of activity planned at our library in the coming weeks.  If your family is looking for something to do, we hope you’ll join us.

On Thursday, June 23^rd, the local Born to Read group is presenting a summer reading event at the library.  Storyteller Bob Gasch will perform at 6:30 p.m.  If you’ve ever seen Bob performing, you’ll know that he really entertains kids and draws them into the stories.  We’ll also do an ethnic craft and have a snack, both related to our “One World, Many Stories” summer reading theme.  This will be for families with children of all ages.

On Friday, June 24^th, we’ll have special guests for preschool story time at 10 a.m.  WonderWeavers Storytellers will be performing.  Tina Rohde and Colleen Shaskin, the WonderWeavers, are based in Eden Prairie and perform in libraries and schools all over the Midwest.  This is one of our Legacy events, which are wrapping up for the year.

If you enjoyed Robert Halbrook’s programs last fall, “Wizard’s School” and “Dark Tales of Mystery & Intrigue”, come see him again on Tuesday, June 28^th at 6:30 p.m.  He’ll be performing his new magic and reading show, “Professor Marvel’s World of Wonders”.   In the show, he’ll take the kids on an adventure through India, England, and other countries around the world, incorporating classic and contemporary children’s books.  This program is geared to kindergarteners through fifth graders, but even parents and grandparents enjoyed Wizard’s School in October. 

There’s no need to sign up for any of these programs; just come join us in the children’s department.

Our usual schedule of story times has resumed, with Toddler Time taking place on Wednesdays from 10:15 to 10:45; Family Story Time on Thursday evenings at 7:00; and Preschool Story Hour on Fridays from 10:00 to 11:00. 

The summer reading program is underway.  It’s open to kids ages 3 to 17.  If you haven’t signed up yet, ask us at the front desk or children’s desk, and we’ll help you get started.   If you have signed up, keep reading and count up to an hour a day of your reading time, and bring in your completed reading logs for prizes. 

Our two children’s book clubs are meeting this week and next.  The middle school book club is meeting on Thursday, June 23, at 3 p.m. to discuss Gulliver’s Travels (the group’s choice at last month’s meeting).  The after-school book club, which is for grades 3-5, is meeting the next Thursday, June 30, at 3 p.m.  There’s a book chosen for this month, but we might be spending most of our time on an art activity this time instead; you’ll have to drop in and find out.  Kids are welcome to join our book clubs at any time.  Just come to the meeting or ask at the library desk ahead of time to get a copy of the book. 

If you’re not a child but a senior citizen, there’s a library book club for you, too.   We have a book club for retirees/seniors that meets at Emmaus Place on the first Thursday of every month at 1 p.m.  We have decided to carry on through the summer this year.  Because of the renovation project beginning at Bethany Home, we will be meeting in the activity room in the basement of Emmaus Place instead of our usual meeting place, the Fireside Room.  For our next meeting on July 7th, we’re reading The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.  The books are not always that literary, but we do read classics from time to time.  Other recent books we’ve read include The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, The Haymakers, and They Named Me Marjorie.  If you’d like to join this book club, stop in to talk to me or give me a call at the library. 

One activity that’s for all ages is our book sale.  Our monthly Friends of the Library book sale normally takes place on the third Saturday of every month.  In July, we’ll be holding it on the Saturday of Watercade instead, July 9^th.  Prices range from 10 to 50 cents per item, and the proceeds benefit the Friends of the Litchfield Library.

Look where you’re walking as you make your way here through the construction!  But we hope we’ll see you here at the library in the coming weeks.