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A.K. Smiley Public Library Blog

Serving the City of Redlands, California since 1894

Archives for June 2023

The Adult Literacy and Friends of A.K. Smiley Public Library partnership

June 25, 2023 By Diane Shimota

Assembly Majority Leader Eloise Gomez Reyes as she presented Katherine Gifford, Diane Shimota, and Trudy Waldron with the certificate of recognition as a 2023 Non-Profit of The Year Honoree

On June 3, 2023, Assembly Majority Leader Eloise Gomez Reyes honored the Friends of A.K. Smiley Public Library (Friends) as one of the 2023 Non-Profits of the Year for Assembly District 50. The honor was awarded to the Friends for their support of the Redlands Adult Literacy Program. Since 2006 the Friends have co-sponsored and supported the Redlands Adult Literacy Program. This sponsorship was initiated when Smiley Library abruptly closed its grant-supported Adult Literacy Program due to the lack of local matching funds. Adult learners and their tutors sought support from the Friends.

In 2011 the Friends Board adopted a resolution which recognizes that adult literacy is of vital importance to the economic and social fabric of Redlands. The Friends consider the Adult Literacy Program one of its essential missions and promote adult literacy through public outreach and financial support. The Friends assist the literacy coordinator in reaching out to the community, forming new partnerships, and receiving grants and donations. A Friends-Library-city-state partnership has led to an expanded Adult Literacy Program which includes: family literacy, computer classes, anthology publications, book groups, leadership classes, and more.

Friends of the Library board members, tutors, staff, AmeriCorps member, and a Library trustee – all who support the Redlands Adult Literacy Program

Friends volunteers help raise funds for Library programs, such as the children and teen summer reading programs, Library programs, and the Adult Literacy Program. The Friends raise monies through memberships, bookstore sales, special sales, auctions, and private donations. Private donations directed to adult literacy are used as matching funds for literacy grants, events, and materials.

The Friends always seek new opportunities to reach out to the community. One volunteer highlighted her recent involvement at the Redlands Saturday Market, where she and other Friends volunteers shared information about the adult literacy program and the Library. She was amazed that many people did not know about A.K. Smiley Public Library or the Adult Literacy Program. Through this outreach, more than eight people volunteered to become literacy tutors.

Kim Green, a Friends board member, volunteer tutor, and Adult Literacy computer class instructor, shared: Volunteering as a tutor with the Adult Literacy Program led me to become involved with the Friends of the Library, and I’m very proud of what both organizations provide to the Redlands community. As a volunteer tutor, I have witnessed firsthand the life-changing power learning to read holds. What most of us take for granted – being able to understand job applications or driver license tests, helping our children with their homework, reading signs and menus – is a daunting if not impossible challenge for more than 20 percent of our community. The Adult Literacy Program is comprised of people of all ages and cultural and ethnic backgrounds, bound by the common belief that the ability to read, write, and communicate is imperative for connecting with our families, community, and world. I am incredibly proud to live where the powerful skill of literacy is available to anyone who expresses their interest and willingness to commit to the work necessary.

The Friends, literacy staff, and adult literacy volunteers witness the life-changing impact of adult literacy as adult learners reach their goals of obtaining new or better jobs, pursing their own education, helping their children with schoolwork, navigating medical decisions, volunteering in the community, earning their citizenship, and gaining self-esteem.

The Adult Literacy Program needs more volunteers to help adults improve their reading and writing skills. Please consider attending the next tutor orientation scheduled for August 22, 2023. If you have any questions or would like to attend the orientation, please contact Diane Shimota, Adult Literacy Coordinator, at 909.798.7565, ext. 4109 or email literacy@akspl.org

If you know someone who needs literacy services, please ask them to contact Diane Shimota. All literacy services are free and confidential. Training, materials, and ongoing support are provided. As many literacy volunteers say, “This is the best volunteer opportunity in Redlands!”

Filed Under: What's New

“All Together Now,” 2023 Summer Reading Program, kicks off Thursday, June 22nd at A.K. Smiley Public Library!

June 18, 2023 By Youth Services Staff

Join us for a spectacular summer line-up of entertainment for kids, teens, and families starting Thursday, June 22nd! Fire up your family’s summer reading at our kickoff event Thursday, June 22, at 10 a.m. in Smiley Park. We’ll start things off with a heart-pumping magic show by comedic magician extraordinaire Arty Loon, followed by a free lunch for children and teens provided by Redlands Unified School District Nutritional Services at 11 a.m. You’ll even have the opportunity to visit with a special surprise VIP library guest (clue: she communicates only in “moo” code).

If you can’t make it to the 10 a.m. show, no problem! Arty Loon will perform again at 2 p.m. in the Contemporary Club!

And don’t forget to register for our summer reading challenge, where toddlers, kids, tweens, and teens will work together to reach our goal of collectively reading every single minute of the 2023 Summer Reading Program (a whopping 61,920 minutes). Can we do it? Only if we read “All Together Now!” Reading logs will be available beginning June 22nd.

Find our full schedule of summer events for children and families at www.akspl.org/yrr. From book giveaways, to opportunity drawings, to delightful entertainment, to free meals for kids and teens, and more, we have so much tucked up our sleeves for families this summer…join us!

Teens, we’ve cooked up some cool summer fun just for you too! Find our full schedule of summer events for teens at www.akspl.org/teens!

Filed Under: News + Events

Readings on Juneteenth

June 16, 2023 By Teresa Letizia

Juneteenth commemorates the day that the last of enslaved people in the United States were informed of their right to be free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later. It wasn’t until U.S. General Gordon Grainger, accompanied by 2,000 Union troops, arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and issued General Order #3 on June 19, 1865 that:

“The people are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor.”

Though Juneteenth has been celebrated in the ensuing years, it became a federal holiday in 2021.

Learn about “The Historical Legacy of Juneteenth” at the National Museum of African American History & Culture: https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/historical-legacy-juneteenth, and check out our list of available books and e-books.

★ On Juneteenth / Gordon-Reed, Annette
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★ Juneteenth / Garrett, Van G. (YRR)
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★ What is Juneteenth? / Jewel, Kirsti (YRR)
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★ Juneteenth for Mazie / Cooper, Floyd (eBook)
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★ Juneteenth : our day of freedom / Wyeth, Sharon Dennis (YRR)
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★ Free at last : a Juneteenth poem / Rolle, Sojourner Kincaid (YRR)
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★ The night before freedom : a Juneteenth story / Armand, Glenda (YRR)
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★ African-American holidays / Winchester, Faith (YRR)
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★ Build a house / Giddens, Rhiannon (YRR)
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★ The strange career of William Ellis : the Texas slave who became a Mexican millionaire / Jacoby, Karl (Heritage Room)
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★ How the Word Is Passed : A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America / Smith, Clint (e-Book)

Filed Under: News + Events

The anniversary of the American Flag is June 14th – read all about it!

June 12, 2023 By Teresa Letizia

The Continental Congress of the United States adopted this resolution on June 14, 1777:

That the flag of the United States shall be of
thirteen stripes of alternate red and white,
with a union of thirteen stars of white in a blue field,
representing the new constellation.

Both President Wilson, in 1916, and President Coolidge, in 1927, issued proclamations asking for June 14 to be observed as the National Flag Day. But it wasn’t until August 3, 1949, that Congress approved the national observance, and President Harry Truman signed it into law.

Find a book here to learn more about our flag, its history and stories, as well as memories and pictures:

★ The flag, the poet, and the song : the story of the Star-Spangled Banner / Molotsky, Irvin

★ So proudly we hail : the history of the United States flag / Furlong, William Rea

★ Long may she wave : a graphic history of the American flag / Hinrichs, Kit

★ Flag : an American biography / Leepson, Marc

★ History of the United States flag / Quaife, Milo Milton

★ Stars & stripes forever : the history, stories, and memories of our American flag / Schneider, Dick

★ What so proudly we hail; all about our American flag, monuments, and symbols / Krythe, Maymie R.

Filed Under: News + Events

Love, lasers, and epic space operas! Some new sci-fi novels to enjoy this summer

June 11, 2023 By Ciara Lightner

Looking for love, laser guns, and the decimation of Earth? Here are some new sci-fi books to enjoy these bright June days.

Malka Older returns with a cozy gaslamp mystery set on the planet Jupiter. The Mimicking of Known Successes centers on Mossa, a mysterious investigator, living on a human outpost on Jupiter many decades after the Earth has become uninhabitable. Mossa is sent off to look into the disappearance of a scholar from a local university that specializes in the rehabilitation of our home planet. While it is unclear what has happened to the missing man, what is clear is that she will need the assistance of a brilliant scholar from that same university. Only problem is the one she already knows happens to be her ex-girlfriend, Pleiti. Drawn into the mystery, the two must figure out how the missing man, a murdered doomsayer, and stolen genetic material of extinct animals all fit together.

Frontier by Grace Curtis is a western sci-fi set in a corrupt land and it centers on a protagonist fueled by love. Three hundred years have passed since humanity splintered into two factions: Those that chose to abandon a dying planet and seek their fortunes in other worlds, and those that stayed. The two factions come clashing together when the Stranger, a woman born in space, comes crashing down on Earth. Finding herself alone, the Stranger must navigate a hostile environment, and a humanity that deems all things involving space illegal. She meets zealots, convinced the planet’s climate problems are retribution, sheriffs obsessed with power, and many that are merely trying to survive. Also, a drug smuggling turtle. The Stranger must navigate her way to her objective, a way back home, and a way back to the woman she loves.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh is an epic space opera that begins on the Gaea station, where some of the last remnants of humans are determined to survive. Kyr (known as Vallie to her twin brother, Magnus, and Valkyr to her squad mates) longs for the day she will be assigned to be a soldier.

Training to be the best since childhood, she longs to avenge Earth, destroyed before her birth, by a collective of alien beings known as the majo. All is going to plan, until the day the assignments are handed out. Kyr’s brother is sent out on a mission he is guaranteed not to return from and Kyr, deemed by Command to contain too much valuable genetic material to waste, is assigned to the Nursery, to birth the next generation of soldiers. Devastated, Kyr sets off from her home, to save her brother and avenge humanity. But by doing so, may find out what really happened all those years ago and what Command is really hiding.

Enjoy these books and many more with prominent LGBTQIA+ representation at your local library, and remember that libraries are for everyone. Happy Pride!

Filed Under: What's New

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