It’s that time of year – Scholastic Book Fair time! This year, we’ve added an Online Fair, which means you can conveniently shop from home, with a wider selection than what is available at our in-library fair. The Online Fair is open now through Dec. 10. Orders will then be shipped to the library (at no cost to you) and should arrive by Dec. 17, in time for Christmas gift-giving! Click on the link on the right-hand side of the page to visit our online fair.

Prefer to see items in person? Visit on in-library Scholastic Book Fair beginning Dec. 7 at the library. For complete dates and information, visit our Fair Homepage.

Scholastic Book Fairs provide an affordable way to purchase books for children and adults, and they also allow the library to add additional materials to our collection at no cost to the library. We appreciate your support!

Just a reminder: The library will be closed from Thursday, Nov. 24-Sunday, Nov. 27. We will reopen at 9 a.m. for regular hours on Monday, Nov. 28. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Annual Hesston Chamber of Commerce food drive is in full swing, collection donations for the Hesston Resource Center. The library is one of several drop-off points in the community. Items can also be taken to Central National Bank, City Hall, First Bank, Golden Plains Credit Union, Hesston Food Market, and The Citizens State Bank. The drive ends Nov. 30.

Some of the most commonly requested items include:

• Bags of rice
• Christmas candy
• Cooking oil (48 oz)
• Hot chocolate mixes
• Microwave popcorn
• Graham cracker crusts
• Jar or canned gravy
• Healthy cereals
• Toothbrushes
• Toothpaste
• Toilet paper
• Shampoo/Conditioner
• Facial tissue
• Sugar (regular, brown or powdered)
• Pancake mixes/syrup
• Jam/jelly
• Cake mixes/frosting
• Canned fruits
• Canned vegetables
• Ramen noodles
• Laundry detergent
• Liquid dish soap

Marci Penner, director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation will be presenting on the “8 Wonders of Kansas Guidebook” at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, November 15, at the library. Come join us for an evening celebrating all the wonderful wonders of Kansas!

Penner, who authored the guidebook, will provide behind the scenes information and showcase 24 locations featured in the book.

The 272-page spiral-bound book features the 216 entries involved in the 8 Wonders of Kansas contests that featured the categories of architecture, art, commerce, cuisine, customs, geography, history, and people.  Designed with a coffee table/guidebook format, the book features 821 photos taken by Harland Schuster. More than 100,000 people voted in the contests that took place from 2007-2010.  Voters determined the top 8 out of 24 finalists in each category.

The event will be held in the community room and is free and open to the public. Seating will be first-come, first-serve basis. Light refreshments will be served, and copies of the book will be available for purchase.

To learn more about the Kansas Sampler Foundation, visit their website at kansassampler.org.

Hesston College is collecting funds to package meals to be sent to the Horn of Africa, where thousands upon thousands are starving. We’ve placed a donation jar at the library, where you can drop off loose change and dollar bills to support this effort!

According to a Hesston College press release, the Hesston College community will participate in the first State Wide Packaging Event (SWIPE) for hunger with Numana by packaging meals and raising money to fund the project Oct. 1.

Numana is an international hunger relief organization based in El Dorado, Kan., that facilitates volunteer food-packaging events throughout the country and sends the meals world-wide to areas where famine and hunger are greatest.

The SWIPE initiative will take place at colleges and universities across Kansas during October. More than 500,000 meals will be packaged throughout the month.

Each meal, which feeds six people, costs 30 cents to prepare and send. Hesston College volunteers are working to raise about $9,000 to pay for the meals they will package. A donation of $65 buys a box of 216 meals.

Hesston College has pledged to use 400 student, faculty, staff and community volunteers to package 50,000 meals. The meals consist of rice, soy protein, freeze-dried pinto beans and 21 vitamins and minerals, which are measured into bags, sealed, boxed and prepared for shipment. The meals packaged at Hesston on Oct. 1 will be sent to the horn of Africa to be distributed to those experiencing starvation.

For more information, contact Hesston College.

We Give Books has about 150 digital children’s books available online. Click here to visit their website. Titles include classics such as Madeline and The Snowy Day, popular book characters Skippyjon Jones and Llama Llama, and many more!

Project Gutenberg is a great source of free public domain works that can be read on your computer, Kindle, Nook, Android phone, iPhone and iPad, among other devices!

For more information about Project Gutenberg, and to check out their catalog, visit www.gutenberg.org. For more information about Project Gutenberg on Mobile Devices, click here.

You also can find audiobooks and ebooks through the State Library of Kansas. You will need a Kansas Library Card, which can be obtained at our library. Visit their site at www.kslib.info and click on “Explore Our Resources” in the top yellow box. Scroll down and select “Audiobooks, Music & More” on the left side of the options, toward the bottom.

You can add the OverDrive Media Console to your computer, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Android Phone or Windows 7 phone and download directly onto your devices. You also can download to a computer and then transfer to another device, such as an MP3 player. Some audiobooks can even be burned onto CD.

For more information, visit the library!

The library will be closed Thursday morning, August 25, for computer network maintenance. We will reopen at noon and be open until 8 p.m.

We appreciate your patience!

Summertime is almost over and it’s just about time for all of you wiggleworms and bookworms to come on down to the library for story time! We’re going to have a wigglin’, gigglin’ good time reading stories, singing songs, chanting rhymes, playing games and doing other fun activities!

Wiggleworms & Bookworms Story Time is for children ages 3½ – 6 and is held in the children’s area of the library. It will be from 10:30 – 11:00 am on Wednesdays beginning September 7.

We will meet every Wednesday through May 23, except for the following holidays and spring break. There will be no story hour on Nov 23, Dec 21 & 28, and March 21.

Please pre-register at the library so we know how many children to expect. I
can’t wait to see you all in September!

~Darla Harms-Becker, Story Hour Teacher

Despite the roasty-toasty temperatures, it’s time for our Summer Reading Program to draw to a close! We have one last event – our Pool Party from 6 to 8 p.m. this Saturday, July 30, at the Hesston Pool. This party is free and open to all Summer Reading Program participants and their families. (Children do not have to have completed their reading goal to participate.)

Children can turn in completed reading charts to earn t-shirts up until school starts. (We ordered our shirts locally, so if we run out of sizes, we can order more, so don’t fret about not having the size you need!)

If you had children or grandchildren participate in Summer Reading Program, please take a moment to fill out this quick survey to let us know what you thought and how we can improve. As always, you can send questions, comments or suggestions to me at hesstonpubliclibrary@gmail.com.