Gimme Space! An Intergalactic Book List for Children

It’s always exciting to see what each year’s summer reading theme will be. Determined by the Collaborative Summer Library Program, it’s always something that can have more than one meaning and works well across generations. This year’s theme is “A Universe of Stories,” and we’ve got so many great books in the Children’s Room to…

Shared Resources for a Shared Planet

There’s really no denying that our world is in trouble. The earth will be fine, because she doesn’t much care about the survival of individual species – including humans – but the future of our children is in danger. According to a United Nations report issued Monday, one million plant and animal species are on…

ART150 Anniversary Video: A Library Time Capsule

This video was created in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Watertown Free Public Library. Click here to watch the full video on the library's Youtube channel. It started with a song that I had from last fall; a piano sketch tentatively titled “Before the Library Opens”. The song had always sounded to me…

How Do You Read?

“Touch This Page: Making Sense of the Ways We Read” is an interactive exhibit about multisensory reading experiences. The exhibit has been on view the Perkins School for the Blind since January; pop-up versions have also appeared at Harvard, Northeastern, and the Boston Public Library. We’re proud to have one of those “Touch This Page”…

Resilience and Celebration

I started working in public libraries twenty years ago as an AmeriCorps VISTA member at the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, Vermont. Among other things, my responsibilities included writing grants for children’s programs, setting up small lending libraries in affordable housing communities, and riding my bike around town to run story times. I stayed at…

Amidst the Chaos, a review

About five years ago I reviewed Sara Bareilles’ album Blessed Unrest for our blog. She finally has a new album out and I thought it would be fun to see how her music has evolved. To start with, Amidst the Chaos doesn’t pull any punches. Bareilles is upfront about how she has changed and how…

Mysterious Travels

I recently read the New York Times article, “52 Books for 52 Places: explore the cities, countries, regions and states in Travel’s ’52 Places to Go in 2019’ through these books” 2/14/19 NYT by the Editor, and it gave me the idea to create my own armchair travel/mystery reading list. These are all series that I…