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.”

Wine & Cheese ticket giveaway!

Join us to toast the library's future

The Litchfield Public Library Wine and Cheese Fundraiser is coming soon! 

Thursday, March 19 from 5:30-7:30 pm
Litchfield VFW

Enjoy 34 high quality wines, 9 beers and ale (some non-alcoholic), 3 non-alcoholic wines, 7 cheeses, chocolate, a silent auction, and a black and white photography exhibit by local photographer Robert Wilde.

Thank you to the following businesses who made donations to the Silent Auction: Peter's on Lake Ripley, Parkview Grille, Carlito's, Swan's Cafe, Dairy Queen, Litchfield Natural Food Co-op, Stockmen's Nursery, Prairie Drifter Farm, Open Sole Yoga and Cricket Meadow Tea Shop. We appreciate the support of all of these fantastic local businesses!

Tickets can be purchased at the library, at the liquor store, or from a board member and are $20. All proceeds will go to benefit our library.

Tickets on sale now for the library foundation's wine & cheese event

I'm the Number One Fan of the Man from ... Illinois!

By Jan Pease

Oh my goodness!  Mr. Jim Gill will be HERE in Litchfield Friday evening May 3 at 7:00 for a free concert at the Litchfield Middle School gym.  Thanks to Litchfield Early Childhood Initiative, the Kindergarten teachers, and Litchfield ECFE, who have joined with Litchfield Library to provide this incredible event. Mr. Gill is in town to speak at the Minnesota Kindergarten Teachers’ Conference, and has agreed to provide a concert for families the evening of May 3.

Jim Gill, an award-winning musician and author, offers more than a show to watch.  Each concert is an opportunity for family play!  In concert, Jim strums energetic rhythms on his banjo while everyone claps, sings, dances and even sneezes along to the silly and inspiring musical games that he creates.

This year's Family Room Tour celebrates Jim’s five awards, over 20 years, from the American Library Association….the same organization that famously grants the Caldecott and Newberry awards for books.  This unprecedented string of awards includes a 2012 honor for his most recent release, Music Play for Folks of All Stripes. 

Jim Gill’s distinctive music play creates a family room in the concert hall.  Come and join in the fun! 

Jim Gill is a musician and author with unique credentials among children's artists.  Jim is a child development specialist, completing his graduate studies in child development at the Erikson Institute of Chicago with a special emphasis on the study of play.  For this reason, each of Jim's recordings and books is created as an opportunity for playful interactions between a child and a caring adult.  Anyone who has experienced one of Jim's family concerts knows that rather than performing for the children and parents, Jim leads them to sing and play together.

Jim has released six award-winning CDs of music play for young children that are favorites in family rooms, classrooms and playrooms.  Jim is also the author of two children's books.  His latest, A Soup Opera, is a sing-along opera inspired by concerts that Jim performs with symphony orchestras.  The book received an American Library Association award in 2010.

I hope that parents and kids will participate in the playground build, and then come on Friday night at 7 for an evening of fun.  Thanks, Mr. Gill, for this press release, and for coming to our town on your Family Room Tour.

Taste wine, view history, find documentaries: The fine things of life, brought to you by the library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

On Thursday, October 25^th, the Litchfield Public Library Foundation will be holding a wine, cheese, and chocolate tasting to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our beautiful library building.  The fundraiser will be held at the Litchfield VFW at 915 East Highway 12 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. 

Several local authors will be displaying and selling their books at the event: Nancy and Joe Paddock, Tim Bergstrom, Dean Urdahl, Steve Dille, and Barb Felt.  Tickets are on sale for $20 per person, benefitting the foundation.  You can buy your tickets ahead of time at the library, at the liquor store, or from a library board member.  You can also buy tickets at the door.

I have learned from Everett Reilly, who is organizing the event, that wine is not the only beverage that will be served.  Three beers, two hard ciders, and five nonalcoholic beverages will be available to sample, in addition to 36 varieties of wine.

Besides our big offsite event, there are some things to take note of within the library building lately.  If you haven’t seen the Litchfield Library history display in our display cabinet, stop in to look at it before it goes away.  Jim Milan from the G.A.R. Hall put together an interesting and fun display on the history of the Litchfield Library, going back to 1875 when the Litchfield Library Association was chartered under Minnesota law and began issuing stock.  Some of the original books from the library’s years in the G.A.R. Hall are there to see, along with photos of the library locations.

We have done a bit of rearranging of our audiovisual materials on the adult side of the library.   We used to have our fiction VHS tapes on the same short shelf as our fiction DVDs.  Our nonfiction DVDs and VHS tapes were on a separate shelf with books.  Our audiobooks were set up in a similar way.  All of this made it harder for most people to find documentaries, exercise videos, concert videos, and nonfiction audiobooks.  The VHS and cassette formats also get used much less now, although some do still get checked out.

We now have all of our adult DVDs on one side of the shelf: new releases first, followed by general movies, with nonfiction down at the end.  I’ve already noticed more nature and history documentaries going out. 

On the other side of the shelf, you can find all of our adult CDs.  Closest to the desk are fiction audiobooks.  In the middle are nonfiction audiobooks.  Furthest from the front desk are our music CDs.  I hope this arrangement will help you find a wider variety of materials you’d like to watch and listen to.

If you want to find VHS tapes and audiobooks on cassette, we still have some.  They are at the end of the bookshelf nearest the CDs and DVDs. 

Our children’s movies and audiobooks are on the children’s side of the library.  We put movies that are rated G or that are clearly geared to a young audience (Sesame Street, Thomas the Tank Engine) in that area.

I hope to see you at the library’s Wine, Cheese, and Chocolate fundraiser at the VFW.  I’ll be there with my husband, and at least one other library staff member will be attending.  And I hope you’ll come to the library to look at our library history display and to find some DVDs and audios that you’ve never noticed before.  The library has a history to be proud of, we strive to stay useful to you in the present day, and our library foundation is always working toward a bright future.  

Summer's Ending, Fall's Beginning

by Beth Cronk, county librarian


As we look ahead to fall, I’d like to invite you to put some Litchfield Library events on your calendar.

The first is really an end of summer event. It’s taking place Thursday, August 23rd, at 3 p.m. We’re having a special event for the end of our summer reading program. Kids of all ages, especially those who are in elementary school, are invited to Professor Marvel’s Dream Machines, a fun-filled magic show. Magician Robert Halbrook always focuses his show around children’s books, both classic and new, to fire kids up about reading. This summer’s show is based on our summer reading theme Dream Big: Read. I can’t say I’m a big fan of magicians in general, but I love to watch Robert. His shows are interesting, he’s funny, and he gets the crowd involved in a really enjoyable way. I’ve seen a huge crowd of both kids and parents having a great time at a show he did here in Litchfield a couple of years ago. Drop in to the children’s department at 3:00 to celebrate summer and reading. Kids can still turn in their reading logs until the end of the month.

In September I’m starting a new adult book club. We will have a brown-bag book club for adults that will meet at noon on the second Tuesday of the month. We’ll meet in the library meeting room for about 45 minutes, but if you need to get back to work after a half hour, you are welcome to leave sooner. You may bring your lunch if you wish. I’m hoping this will be a good opportunity for adults working in town who can get away on their lunch break, people who have jobs that aren’t 9 to 5, retirees, and stay-at-home parents who don’t have their kids with them at that time. Our first meeting will be on September 11th, and our first book is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I have copies available; stop in to pick one up if you’d like to join us.

Our gaming club is continuing on Monday nights from 6-8 p.m. It’s for adults, teens, and kids ages 10 and up. We have been getting a small but steady turnout from all of those age groups, and they’ve been having a good time. Sign up at the library if you plan to come every week or just once in a while, so that our volunteer leader can plan the night’s activities. So far they’ve played Dungeons & Dragons, BattleTech, and Magic: The Gathering. If you have a tabletop game you’d like to bring in and demonstrate, talk to me about setting up an evening for that. If you’re into something like Settlers of Catan or Dominion, we’d love to have you teach others how your new favorite game is played.

Save the date for the Litchfield Public Library Foundation’s wine & cheese fundraiser on Thursday, October 25th. It will be held at the Litchfield VFW from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available now at the library, at the Litchfield liquor store, and from library board members. The foundation is asking for a donation of $20 per ticket. The event will feature local authors, as well as wine, cheese, and chocolate tasting. Invite your friends and make it a fun night out.

Fun Minnesota Author Events This Month

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian


Our libraries in Meeker County have some exciting events coming up in the next week. All of them are brought to us by Pioneerland Library System with funding from Minnesota’s Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.

The first is a Minnesota author event in Dassel on Thursday, June 14. Mystery writer William Kent Krueger will be speaking at 2 p.m. at the Dassel History Center & Ergot Museum at 901 1st St N. Krueger is a four-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award. His novel Vermillion Drift was a New York Times bestseller. Krueger’s books are set in the north woods of Minnesota and feature the character Cork O’Connor, a former sheriff of Ojibwe and Irish descent. The latest in the series is Northwest Angle. The next one, Trickster’s Point, is coming out in August. I’ve heard Krueger speak at a conference, and he is an insightful, interesting man who is good at speaking to a full room or to an individual person. If you’re a fan (and I know there are many of you out there), I’d recommend this as a good opportunity to meet him.

The next is another Minnesota author, Mary Casanova. She will be speaking at the Grove City Library in the community room on Thursday, June 21, at 3 p.m. Casanova is a children’s author who writes novels and picture books. She has won two Minnesota Book Awards, a spot on the American Library Association Notable Books for Children list, and a Parents’ Choice Gold Award. She has written several American Girl books, including those featuring Chrissa, Jess, and McKenna. She has also written books that have no connection to American Girl, such as One-Dog Canoe, Stealing Thunder, and Utterly Otterly Day. Bring the family and meet an author who can help inspire your children to write and to have a life-long love of reading.

Finally, our third event will take place on Friday, June 22. Meteorologist Mike Lynch will be presenting a Starwatch program at the Forest City Thresher’s Building from 9 - 11 p.m. The building is across the road from the Forest City Stockade. The presentation will begin with a half-hour orientation to the night sky with maps, before looking up at the stars to locate constellations. Mike will also have large telescopes set up for everyone to look through. Bring chairs or blankets and bug spray.

For all of these events, there is no need to register or to pay for admission. Everyone is welcome to come and learn from some of the authors who live here in Minnesota.

Free chamber orchestra concert featuring Maria Jette

Join us for a free pops concert presented by Pioneerland Library System, the Minnesota Sinfonia, and partners, through Legacy funding.  The concert will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 10th, at the Dassel-Cokato Performing Arts Center (in the Dassel-Cokato High School).  No tickets or reservations are needed.  The Minnesota Sinfonia presents free concerts geared to families and children -- bring the kids!

Greatest Generation concert this Sunday

Join us this Sunday at 1 p.m. for Happy Days Are Here Again: Uplifting Songs of the Greatest Generation.  Jazz vocalist Rhonda Laurie will perform this free concert at the Litchfield Opera House, 136 N Marshall Ave, Litchfield MN.  This concert is presented by the Litchfield Public Library, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Litchfield Opera House Association with funding from the Minnesota Legacy Amendment.

June Events Brought to You by the Library

by Mary Hansen and Beth Cronk, Litchfield library staff
5/26/11

As summer approaches quickly, the Litchfield Public Library has programming planned for all ages.

Minnesota author Mike Roberts will be at the library on June 2nd. Mike will speak about his experiences as the last lighthouse keeper at Split Rock Lighthouse and his work with the U.S. Coast Guard. The program will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the library meeting room. Mike lives in St. Cloud and is the author of the book The Last Keeper at Split Rock.

On June 7th the Litchfield Library will be hosting the event “Most Haunted Locations of Minnesota”. Join us and find out where you can supposedly see possessed statues come to life, pick up a phantom hitchhiker, encounter a ghost train, enjoy a play in a haunted theatre, or have your car pushed by spirits. This presentation will be given by Chad Lewis. Chad is a paranormal researcher and author for Unexplained Research, L.L.C. He holds a Master's of Science degree in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Chad has trekked across the world in search of the paranormal. He has been featured on the Discovery Channel’s “A Haunting,” ABC’s “World’s Scariest Places,” and hundreds of radio interviews, TV appearances, and newspaper articles. Chad is the author of the Hidden Headlines series and also the co-author of the Road Guide to Haunted Locations book series. Chad has presented at hundreds of libraries, universities, schools, and private functions for crowds of 7 to 700.

The kick-off for the summer reading program, One World, Many Stories, will be on Thursday, June 9th, at the Dassel, Grove City and Litchfield Libraries. Musician Dennis Warner will entertain us with music related to the theme for this year. Dennis is a folk/Americana singer and songwriter from Minnesota who performs all over the country and has recorded eight albums. He accompanies himself on guitar and is known for humorous, family-oriented concerts. He has been featured on National Public Radio and has performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Grove City Library’s kick-off event begins at 10:00 a.m., with Dennis performing at 11:00. Dennis will perform at the beginning of the Dassel Library’s event at 3 p.m. The kick-off will run from 6 - 8 p.m. at the Litchfield Library, with Dennis performing at 6:30.

The Minnesota Historical Society, along with the Litchfield Public Library and the Litchfield Opera House Association, will be sponsoring a concert called “Happy Days are Here Again” at the Litchfield Opera House on June 12th at 1 p.m. This free concert features Rhonda Laurie, a former New Yorker and now a Twin Cities jazz and cabaret singer, who is known for her sophisticated but warm voice and stage presence. Rhonda has performed at The Dakota, the Minnesota Fringe Festival, Lake Harriet Bandshell, and the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, as well as many other venues. This Greatest Generation show is a musical journey with songs and stories from the 1930s through the 1950s. It should be fun for all ages.

You don’t need to sign up or pay admission to attend any of these programs. Just mark your calendars and come join us for some entertainment and culture to start off your summer!