What a great feeling being warm is! It’s great not to have to be in a heavy winter coat! I know it is easier for our young moms loading up kids for Story Hour each Monday morning. This Monday we will be reading “Richard Scarry’s Egg in the Hole Book” and having a fun craft.
Did you know that the “Wizard of OZ” was a metaphor for the Populist movement? The Populist movement was in the late 1800s and was mainly made of farmers and factory workers. One of their beliefs was that our money standard should be backed by both gold and silver. Dorothy’s ruby red slippers were actually silver in the book to represent the silver standard. If you want to know more, we have a little book in our “Oz” display that explains it all. It really ties with the time of another book in our collection “Prairie Bachelor” by Lynda Fenwick and style of “Alice in Wonderland.”
Speaking of “Alice in Wonderland,” have you ever been to The Rabbit hOle in North Kansas City? It is an immersive museum where you can step right into your favorite children’s book. It is on the list of World’s Greatest Places 2024 and it’s right in our backyard! Google it; go there ASAP! We are starting a collection of the 45 books featured in the museum so you can read the book to your child before you go
Another collection we are trying to gather is books recommended by 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten. Alas! Sooo many good books. Sooo little time and money. We’re working on improving our collections of both adult and children’s books.
Library calendar
• Story Hour Monday Mornings 10-11 a.m.
• Every Wednesday except 3rd Wednesday - ESOL with Rachel Sandoval, 6 p.m.
• April 22 - Recently Reading book club 5:30-7 p.m.
• May 2 - 6-8 p.m. Jordan Hildebrand Roemerman, Kansas Tourism Deputy Director - Department of Commerce, will be here to enlighten us on all that Kansas has to offer. We will also have special Kansas music, featuring Linda Hiebert, Adrienne Minnis and Janet Hardin. Kansas laser art created by Shawna Duvall will be on display. The Culinary Art class from Stafford High School will provide food for purchase.
• June 6 - 6-8 p.m. Barry and Meta West, Community Cookbooks From the Past. We’ll take a look at how community cookbooks can provide insight into people, places and time periods. Using Stafford cookbooks that span a time frame from 1926 to 1985, Meta and Barry find out how cooks of the past (many whose surnames you will probably recognize) not only filled a cookbook with recipes, they also preserved a record of their collective efforts to fund a new Stafford church in 1926. Meta, with assistance from Barry, will share ads from that same cookbook – testaments to the booming businesses that were thriving in Stafford. Feel free to bring any of your local/family cookbooks. Sue Griffiths will have a display of aprons and potholders. Core will provide food for purchase.
Gerry Hildebrand is the head librarian for the Nora Larabee Memorial Library. Phone 620-234-5762, email larabeelibrary@gmail.com or visit Facebook at Nora Larabee Memorial Library.
