Saturday, December 15, 2012

Happy memories of Newtown

Newtown holds a special place in my heart. I was a children's librarian at the town's public library from 1994-1997.

Here are some happy memories:

  
We held big storytime programs in this old church.  We needed the extra space because we'd get at least 100 kids at our evening bedtime story program.  To promote the weekly event, we'd put a sandwich board sign on the sidewalk. This church is also where my friend Garrett met his wife. I pointed her out to him and said she was the most beautiful woman in the building. Garrett said yes, but that it would take someone with a lot of self-confidence to date a woman that tall and gorgeous.  I said, "you could do it." His children were baptized here, too.

When we had to move the library to a temporary location, we loaded books into cars and moved the entire collection car by car to the new locale. To prepare for the move, many patrons checked out  tons of books and kept them at home so we wouldn't have to lug them around. We waved fines, of course.

The original library building had a fireplace in almost every room. We had a piano, too!



The reference librarian loves cats. To find homes for the strays she rescues, she posts a sign at the circulation desk "Barn need a good mouser?"
The judge's granddaughter helped me recruit teens for our Teen Advisory Board. Since she was really popular, her participation made it seem like the cool thing to do.


For a small town, our summer reading program had an extremely high number of participants. We received over 420 book reviews for our middle school madness contest, and the prizes were all given to us for free by local merchants.