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.

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.  

Books for mom

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian


As we approach Mother’s Day, I thought I’d highlight some of our newer books that have to do with mothers and motherhood, as well as tell you about a new display in our library that has been set up by a mother and daughter.

We have a beautiful new display cabinet at the library that has been given in memory of Rosann Lorenz. It’s a lovely item in itself, and because it’s a locked glass cabinet we can again feature collections and displays in a secure fashion like we did in the original library. We are so grateful for this gift.

Our first display has been loaned by Esther Hegg. She has amazing collections of antique buttons that she has shown competitively. She and her daughter set up the museum-like display in our new cabinet. I hope you’ll stop in to take a look at it during the month of May.

Now, onto books for mothers and books about motherhood: An American journalist moved to Paris and wrote the book Bringing up bebe: One American mother discovers the wisdom of French parenting. Pamela Druckerman didn’t expect to admire French parenting like she did the food or the fashion, but she found interesting differences between the way we raise our children and the way they do. She says that babies in France tend to sleep through the night earlier, the children eat a wider variety of foods, and the parents exert a relaxed authority over their children, and that we could learn a trick or two from them.

Anne Lamott is known for her humor and raw honesty in her memoirs and novels, including Operating instructions, about being a single mother during her son’s first year, and Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life, one of my favorite books. Her latest nonfiction work is Some assembly required: A journal of my son’s first son. Lamott’s son unexpectedly became a father at 19, and the book covers their changing roles and relationships during the first year of her grandson’s life. Lamott’s son Sam co-wrote this book.

Message from an unknown Chinese mother: Stories of loss and love, by Xinran, ties in a bit with the recent news story of Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese dissident who has worked on issues of abuses of family planning policy. The nonfiction book by Xinran tells stories of women in China who have lost their newborn daughters through adoption, abandonment, and murder. The mothers’ stories are heartbreaking, but parents who have adopted babies from China say that it’s worthwhile to read it and understand the circumstances that may have brought their daughters to them.

Lisa Hendey, the creator of CatholicMom.com, has written The handbook for Catholic moms: Nurturing your heart, mind, body, and soul. It’s a short book with practical ideas for helping mothers enhance all the areas of their lives, given with a Catholic perspective.

Another mothering book with a Christian perspective is Raising a daughter after God’s own heart, by Elizabeth George. George draws on her child-rearing experiences to give advice to mothers who want to teach life lessons to their girls and help them develop their spiritual lives.

Whether you are a mother or you have one to honor or remember, I wish you a happy Mother’s Day.