Director's Update, July 7, 2020
7/7/2020 • 3 years ago
The information on this page may be outdated as it was published 3 years ago.
Hello!
I hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. We started the holiday weekend with a meaningful communal reading of Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” and the U.S. Declaration of Independence, co-sponsored by Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui and City Manager Louis A. DePasquale.
Our amazing CPL team has been busy! In the first few weeks of holds pickups, we checked out 4305 items to 1474 patrons. As of today, 745 youth and adults have signed up for our Summer Reading program and we have presented 21 virtual programs for 854 families.
I hope you are all signed up for Summer Reading and enjoying completing your challenges! If not, it is not too late to start! Adults, teens, kids and groups can register on our website.
There is a LOT of Summer Reading programming for kids offered this week including: Pineapple Project, Hip Hop Dance with Illstyle & Peace, Storytelling with Mokoto, Rosalita’s Puppets and Jay Mankita’s Playful Engineers.
You can also begin registering for these youth programs, which are happening next week: Tales from African Traditions with Valerie Tutson, Sciencetellers, Jenny the Juggler, and Queer Kid Stuff Live!.
And don’t forget about our weekly Thursday Virtual Family story time at 11 am. Registration is required.
We also have a very special Summer Reading event, Meet the Mayor and Vice-Mayor, which will be held on Friday July 17 at 2 pm. Participants will virtually meet Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui and Vice-Mayor Alanna Mallon, hear their stories, and find out how to become leaders in the community! Registration is required.
We are also co-sponsoring the Cambridge Book Bike Virtual Story Time series, beginning this Tuesday July 7 at 11 am, and continuing each Tuesday at 11 am through August 4. It will offer children and their grownups 20-25 minutes of songs, stories, and rhymes. Registration is required. The Cambridge Book Bike is a collaboration among the Agenda for Children Literacy Initiative, the Cambridge Public Library, and the Center for Families.
The #BlackLivesMatter Solidarity Book Club has been postponed until July 20th. Participants are invited to read Me and White Supremacy by Layla M. Saad and then join our virtual session. This eye-opening book "challenges readers to unpack their biases and dismantle the privilege within themselves in order to stop inflicting damage on people of color." The ebook is available on OverDrive and Hoopla with a Cambridge Public Library card. (If you do not have a library card, you can register online.) Registration is required.
To stay connected to what’s happening at the Library, please subscribe to our email list, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and visit our website.
Keep cool and keep reading!
Dr. Maria McCauley
Director of Libraries