The Community Libraries of Providence offer a slew of programming every week for kids and adults at their nine locations around the city – from book clubs, to book sales, to opportunities to pick up a new skill. We highlight a few of these events in our monthly community libraries segment.
For April, morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with Cheryl Space, Library Director of the Community Libraries of Providence, and Jack Gunter, head of circulation at Rochambeau Library.
Book sales at Rochambeau and Mount Pleasant Libraries
Cheryl Space: The Friends of the Rochambeau Library are having their big spring book sale this week starting on Wednesday, April 2. There are special Friends of the Library hours, and you can join the Friends at the door if you want to get a first look at the books. It will open for the public on Thursday, April 3 from 9:30 to 7 p.m. Friday afternoon, everything [will be] half price. And Saturday, April 5, all day, $5 a bag. So this is a really good chance to build your home library, and I’m happy to report that we’ve had a large donation of books in Renaissance art, Roman history, and mysteries. So if those are your special areas of interest, you can come on in and check it out.
At the end of the month, the Friends of the Mount Pleasant Library are having a thrift store and book sale on Saturday, April 26 from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. They’ll have clothing, kids’ bikes, small pieces of furniture, home goods and books. For the children’s books, you can buy one for 25 cents and get your second for free. So those are two opportunities to come in and purchase some things at your library that will also benefit the programming at those libraries.
Rochambeau Library’s art motivation group
Space: It meets monthly. The next meeting is on April 9 at 6:15 p.m. This is an opportunity for artists – both professional artists and artists who do art as a hobby – to come and share and discuss their art and get some motivation from others. The only rule is it has to be big enough to see and small enough to fit through the door.
At the end of the conversation and the end of looking at each other’s art, everyone puts a word into a hat and you draw one out and that’s the theme for the next month. So it sounds like a really interesting group and a way to really meet other people in the neighborhood who are into art.
National Library Week: April 6-12
Space: We’re having a celebration on Wednesday, April 9 at Knight Memorial Library. We’re going to be launching a brand new tour of the building, and this is a 100-year-old building. It opened on May 14, 1924. So you can come in and, using your smartphone, get a look and peek at the details of all the special details of this library. We’re also launching a memory bank where, if you grew up in the neighborhood, you can share your story of the library and have it recorded, which is going to be very cool.
Just in general, for National Library Week, I encourage everyone to visit your local library. Get a library card, check out a new program, borrow some books, and if you feel so inclined, write a postcard or reach out to your legislators about the Freedom to Read legislation that’s going through the Rhode Island General Assembly right now, if you support collections that represent all members of our community, and if you would like to support authors and illustrators having freedom to express their own ideas and creativity.
Rochambeau Library’s “Strange Chronicles” book club
Jack Gunter: Our book club is mostly about speculative fiction, which can be anything from horror to science fiction to fantasy. In April we’ll be discussing Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. In that book, a spacecraft enters the solar system, and then the plot follows these scientists who have to decipher this alien technology. We’ll be meeting on Thursday, April 10 at 6 p.m. in Rocheambeau’s cafe space.
After that, we have Fever Dream by George R. R. Martin, who is famous for his “Game of Thrones” series. Then in June, we will meet to discuss Buffalo Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, who has become a big name in the horror book scene.
You can learn more about what’s going on at the community libraries at clpvd.org.
