The Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County (CFBMC) awarded the Library a grant for equipment, appliances, and supplies to establish a 600-square foot teaching kitchen as part of the construction of the forthcoming Southwest Branch Library. Scheduled to open in 2022, the kitchen will provide free, hands-on cooking and nutrition programs for all ages, increasing food security and advancing literacy, math, and science. The Library has hired an architect for the new branch and is currently investigating site options. Read more about Library Receives Grant for Future Southwest Branch Teaching Kitchen

The Libraries Transform Book Pick is a new digital reading program that connects readers nationwide by offering free access to the same eBook through public libraries. The program, a collaboration between the American Library Association (ALA) and Rakuten OverDrive, gives public libraries the opportunity to bring readers together to discover a new eBook and celebrate the very best in reading.

After the Flood, an inventive and riveting climate fiction saga by Kassandra Montag, will be available October 7–21. Use your library card and the Libby app to download a free copy of the eBook to your personal device. There will be no waitlists or holds for this title.   Read more about New National eBook Club

Everyone has heard about the talented, super-smart teachers who work for the Teach for America program. But why do many of these new teachers only stay for a year or two and then move on?

In Reading with Patrick, compelling and emotionally resonant memoir, Michelle Kuo, a Harvard-educated Asian American, relates her two years teaching in poverty-torn Helena, Arkansas, a delta town close to the Mississippi state line that has lost nearly all of its industry. Kuo also describes her parents’ great expectations for her career, and their deep disappointment when she takes a low-paying position in education. Read more about Reading with Patrick

Did you ever dream of being in a tsunami? As a college freshman I did, repeatedly over a course of a couple of months. Luckily, I lived in the mountains then, a few hundred miles from the sea.

Richard Lloyd Parry, an English journalist, who spent over a decade in Japan, did six years of research for this excellent book. In one chapter, he recounts Teruo Konno’s experience being swept and tossed for hours in the great tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011. Konno’s tale reads like a thriller.

As a city employee, Teruo opened the doors to evacuees at a city hall branch office next to the Kitakami River, fifteen feet above sea level and inland from the ocean. Everyone in the building survived the severe shaking, but the building lost power. No one knew that officials had revised the tsunami warning to 120 feet. Read more about Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone

The story of a man's life always includes his father—and even more so when the father takes his own life. In this moving memoir, a poet and professor describes growing up in a big Catholic family in Seattle during the 1960s. Read more about My Father Before Me: A Memoir