A short library drama

We hope you enjoy this short yet extremely moving human library movie. Plot: a chance meeting on a street corner leads to library drama.

Cake! and Pizza! Chess club! Music! Math!

Cake! Cale alone is very exciting for us, but when you add in pizza, chess club, and 3 music performances in one go, the excitement may be too much and the ship may sink. This Thursday! at 5:30, come one, come all!

So how is math homework going? Everyone forgot almost everything about math over the summer, but it's all coming back to us. Washington Park Library is the math homework capitol of Rhode Island, so come on in with your math. Even our security guard, Julio, is fond of math. Our goal is for everyone to do their math homework every day. We may have to hold a math contest by the end of the year. Plus, we've added a lot of math books that you can check out of the library and take home. If you don't have a textbook, and just have a worksheet, you definitely should think about checking out a math book that has some examples and an explanation of the kind of math problem you're working on.

It's hard to know which is better: math? cake? pizza? Math will help you more in the long run, but pizza definitely tastes much, much, better.

What's up this fall?

Welcome back to school, and back to the library to all our neighborhood students who've been away. What's up this fall? Homework help every day after school, both in English and Spanish. And our regulars know we are all about helping with math, writing, science fair, and all kinds of school projects and papers.

We have some completely great after-school activities coming up too- our ongoing learn-to-draw-and-write Comics class, for one- here's a couple of comics kids did.
The Comics Consortium (that's the group of all the artists who participate) has an anthology coming out, put together by awesome instructors / artists Walker Mettling and Andrew Oesch. This will be both the kids' work and work by other artists inspired by their work.
We're adding Cyberkids, super fun computer classes for upper elementary kids, and maybe a hip hop / creative writing/ poetry class. We definitely will have a photography project too.
Chess club has changed to 5:30pm every Thursday with Sam still coaching. And Fridays are still super excellent movie and game day, with great movies that are kid friendly. If you want to see a particular movie, talk to Lyndsy and Sara.
See you soon!

The Professor!

Who is the mysterious Professor?

He was a 14" tall hollow chocolate bunny; oddly he was holding a book and had been given the name "The Professor." No one knows why. We acquired him from the Family Dollar Store about a month before Easter.
No one could stand the waiting before eating him... almost daily, Sean asked: "When will we eat the Professor?"
Finally on Friday the 22nd, we did the deed.

Fire on O'Connor Street

Late late late last Thursday night, the 21st, the house on the corner of Jillson and O'Connor Streets burned down- right behind our library. Fortunately everyone got out quickly and everyone's OK. Most amazingly, the demolition started almost immediately on Friday morning- right after the fire marshal came, at about 11:00 am.

And by Saturday afternoon, there was only a vacant lot.

It's National Poetry Month, Fool!

It's National Poetry Month, and we had the great good luck to be visited by the following members of Ocean State Poets: Margie Flanders, Larry Krips, and Lynnie Gobeille. A couple of our own library users read as well: Sam LaFortune, and Asia Perry. Some audience members also took turns reading poems by our visiting poets, and a couple of us just read our favorite poems.
Below, Sam LaFortune reading from his phone. And below that, our visiting poets.

Domino Club and Telekinesis

Below, you can see the physical evidence of a strange new WPK phenomenon which we call "dominoes and telekinesis." Domino club, which is a bit of an unfixed floating club, but formally meets Wednesday at 4pm, is a huge hit and the level of concentration and competition is unparalleled in WPK's history.
In order to gain that extra advantage, some players appear to have begun using telekinesis with spectator partners feeding them the tiles in the other players' hands. Or, at least that's what we think they're doing. Or might be doing, or something. You be the judge.