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Even though our in-person programs have been suspended, we have a packed schedule of virtual programming lined up through the fall and into the holiday season. Our theme for the Fall 2020 season is on our shared humanity and the ways in which we can all come together.
Now Available
Upcoming Programs
Wednesday Morning 10:30 AM | Wednesday Evening 7:00 PM | Saturday Morning 10:30 AM | Saturday Afternoon 2 PM |
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Week 1: 08/30-09/05 | Lissy's Friends | n/a | Origami: Hummingbirds | n/a |
Week 2: 09/06-09/12 | The Dancing Tiger | Pippi Longstocking (Part 1/3) | Story & Craft: Fish for Jimmy | Selections from Women in Art |
Week 3: 09/13-09/19 | Abuelo | Pippi Longstocking (Part 2/3) | Origami: Horse | Red Headed Princess (P:art 1/3) |
Week 4: 09/20-09/26 | We Are a Rainbow | Pippi Longstocking (Part 3/3) | Story & Craft: Show Way | Red Headed Princess (Part 2/3) |
Week 5: 09/27-10/03 | Just Ask! | Song of the Trees | Origami: Tree | Red Headed Princess (Part 3/3) |
Week 6: 10/04-10/10 | Jacob's New Dress | In Our Mother's House | Story & Craft: Rainbow Weaver | How They Met (Part 1/2) |
Week 7: 10/11-10/17 | Rainbow All Around Me | Fighting for Equal Rights (Part 1/2) | Origami: Hearts | How They Met (Part 2/2) |
Week 8: 10/18-10/24 | Brown Sugar Babe | Fighting for Equal Rights (Part 2/2) | Story & Craft: Equality's Call | House on Mango Street (Part 1/2) |
Week 9: 10/25-10/31 | Vote for Our Future | Secret of the Andes (Part 1/3) | Origami: Eagle | House on Mango Street (Part 2/2) |
Week 10: 11/01-11/07 | Miss Ladybird's Wildflowers | Secret of the Andes (Part 2/3) | Story & Craft: Girl Who Loved Wild Horses | Second Bend in the River (Part 1/3) |
Week 11: 11/08-11/14 | All the Colors of the Earth | Secret of the Andes (Part 3/3) | Origami: Turtle | Second Bend in the River (Part 2/3) |
Week 12 11/15-11/21 | Fry Bread | Ledgerbook of Thomas Blue Eagle | Story & Craft: Rough Face Girl | Second Bend in the River (Part 3/3) |
Week 13: 11/22-11/28 | Legend of the Indian Paintbrush | Boy and His Mud Horses (Part 1/2) | Origami: Gift Box | January's Sparrow |
Week 14: 11/29-12/05 | Last Stop on Market Street | Boy and His Mud Horses (Part 2/2) | Story & Craft: Minty | La Linea (Part 1/2) |
Week 15: 12/06-12/12 | Family Tree | Fiona's Lace | Origami: Santa Claus | La Linea (Part 2/2) |
Week 16: 12/13-12/19 | Spring After Spring | Trees of the Dancing Goats | Story & Craft: Adventures of a Plastic Bottle | Jars of Hope |
Content Guide
We encourage all parents/guardians to read over the descriptions of the books we’ll be reading as part of the program. You can decide which stories are right for your family.
Wednesday Mornings, 10:30 AM: Story & Craft
These videos are like our Read To Me Storytime sessions, with a short book and a simple craft.
| Lissy’s Friends - Grace Lin | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Asian-American experience, loneliness, belonging, friendship, crafts | |
| Lissy has just transferred to a new school and is having a hard time connecting with the other children. So she starts making her own friends—origami animals! | |
| The Dancing Tiger - Malachy Doyle | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Seasons, time, secrets, dance, fairy tales | |
| A short and charming modern fairy tale about a girl and a dancing tiger. | |
| Abuelo - Arthur Dorros | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Hispanic/Latino experience, family, change | |
| An English story with some Spanish loanwords about a young boy in Argentina and the relationship he has with his grandfather. | |
| We Are a Rainbow - Nancy Maria Grande Tabor | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Hispanic/Latino experience, immigration, cultural exchange, unity, universality | |
| A picture book emphasizing the similarities between the ways people live all around the world. | |
| Just Ask! - Sonia Sotomayor | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Disability, health, accommodation, solidarity | |
| A picture book about children with various disabilities and chronic health conditions working together to plant a garden. Children are encouraged not to fear their peers who may act differently, but to ask a teacher or a parent about them. | |
| Jacob’s New Dress – Sarah & Ian Hoffman | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Gender roles and expectations, acceptance, understanding | |
| A picture book about a boy who likes to wear dresses, and the ways in which his parents and teacher support him. | |
| Rainbow All Around Me - Sandra Pinkney | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Multicultural representation, feelings, colors | |
| A book about colors; each color is represented by a different child | |
| Brown Sugar Babe - Charlotte Watson Sherman | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Person of color experience, acceptance, loving yourself for who you are | |
| A picture book about a little girl who wishes she were a different color, and how her mother explains that brown is beautiful too. | |
| Vote for Our Future - Margaret McNamara | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Patriotism, democracy, multicultural representation | |
| An elementary school closes every year to become a polling station, and its students band together to get out the vote. | |
| Miss Lady Bird’s Wildflowers - Kathi Appelt | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Short biography |
| Themes: Environment, feminism, nature, heritage | |
| A brief biography of Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson, with a focus on her love of flowers and advocacy for green spaces in public works. | |
| All the Colors of the Earth - Sheila Hamanaka | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Multicultural representation, nature, acceptance | |
| A rhyming picture book about the colors of nature and how they show themselves in human beings. | |
| Fry Bread - Kevin Noble Maillard | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Native American experience, family, heritage, cross-cultural foodways | |
| In this book, fry bread is used as a metaphor for time, family, tradition, history, and a nation uniting disparate Native American/First Nations cultures. | |
| Legend of the Indian Paintbrush - Tomie dePaola | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Native American experience, folk tale, nature, art, finding a place in society, realizing a dream | |
| An illustrated retelling of a folk tale, about how the titular paintbrush (the state flower of Wyoming) came to be. | |
| Last Stop on Market Street - Matt de la Peña | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Black experience, poverty, class, envy, disability, neighborhood pride | |
| Newbery award winner for 2016. A young boy focuses on all the things he doesn’t have, while his grandmother reminds him of the things that money can’t buy. | |
| The Family Tree - David McPhail | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Environment, heritage, nature, the cost of progress | |
| A talking-animal story where a boy and his forest friends team up to save an old-growth tree with a deep history. | |
| Spring After Spring - Stephanie Roth Sisson | |
| Audience: Young children (preschool-2nd Grade) | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Environment, wildlife preservation, activism | |
| A capsule biography of Rachel Carson, focusing on her childhood love of nature and how it led to her later environmental activism. | |
Wednesday Evenings, 7:00 PM
Stories for families to enjoy together; we’ll be reading several chapter books in multiple parts.
| Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Novel |
| Themes: Children’s rights, questioning authority, social mores, friendship, family | |
| A 1945 classic translated from Swedish. Tommy and Annika’s new neighbor is a unique, wild girl named Pippi--she has no mother or father, keeps a horse on her porch, is as strong as ten policemen, and has no respect for “adult” foolishness. But for all her unconventional behavior, Pippi wants to belong and have friends. | |
| Song of the Trees - Mildred D. Taylor | |
| Audience: Children (Grade 4+) | Format: Short novel |
| Themes: Black experience, Jim Crow, poverty, environment | |
| A novel set in Mississippi during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cassie’s father is away from home working to build the railroads. To make ends meet, Cassie’s Big Ma sells the rights to cut down trees on their land to a developer and receives far less than they’re worth. Worse, the developers return again and again to threaten Cassie’s family. | |
| In Our Mothers’ House - Patricia Polacco | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: LGBTQ, non-traditional families, acceptance, love | |
| Marmee and Meema have three adopted children. With two mothers and no father in the house, they live a happy and contented life. There’s a neighbor who thinks it isn’t right, but the moms can meet her misgivings with love and grace. | |
| Fighting for Equal Rights: Susan B. Anthony - Maryann Weidt | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Biography |
| Themes: Feminism, voting rights, activism, poverty, prejudice | |
| A factual recounting of the life of Susan B. Anthony, from her youth to her activism in the abolition and temperance movements and eventually becoming one of the foremost voices in the battle for women’s suffrage. | |
| Secret of the Andes - Ann Nolan Clark | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Novel |
| Themes: Indigenous heritage, pre-Columbian America, colonialism, discovery | |
| Cusi is nine years old and his life in a high mountain valley with his teacher Chuto and their herd of llamas is all he knows. One day a traveler passes through, and Cusi is inspired to seek out the wider world and the secrets of his own people’s past. | |
| The Ledger Book of Thomas Blue Eagle - Gay Matthaei, Jewel Grutman, Adam Cvijanovic, Arthur Amiotte | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book / artbook |
| Themes: Native American experience, colonialism, cultural imperialism, environment | |
| Designed to resemble the ledger books used among the Plains Indians during the 19th century, this story is written from the perspective of Thomas Blue Eagle, a Sioux youth who is sent to a boarding school to “become white”. The story is fictional, but the Carlisle Indian School in central Pennsylvania is historical fact. (This book is on the schedule tentatively and may need to be changed if we cannot obtain the publisher’s permission prior to recording.) |
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| The Boy & His Mud Horses - Paul Goble | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Short story collection |
| Themes: Native American experience, oral tradition, indigenous religion, environment | |
| A collection of around two dozen short stories and poems passed down among the Pawnee, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Lakota, and other Plains Indians. | |
| Fiona’s Lace - Patricia Polacco | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Immigration, poverty, prejudice, cultural heritage | |
| A picture book about Patricia Polacco’s ancestor Fiona and her family, who came to America to find work and build a new life. | |
| The Trees of the Dancing Goats - Patricia Polacco | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Jewish experience, Hanukkah, tradition, religious tolerance, generosity | |
| An autobiographical story from Polacco’s childhood about Hanukkah, Christmas, and love for your neighbors. | |
Saturday Mornings, 10:30 AM
A story and a more in-depth craft. These will alternate each week with Origami Club projects.
| Fish for Jimmy - Katie Yamasaki | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Japanese-American experience, xenophobia, internment camp life, PTSD, sibling bonds | |
| Based on a true story from the author’s family about the mass imprisonment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. | |
| Show Way - Jacqueline Woodson | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Black experience, slavery, oppression, liberation crafts, oral tradition, mother-daughter bonds | |
| A picture book adaptation of a tale passed down from mother to daughter in the author’s family, about the “show way” quilts which acted as a secret code among slaves. | |
| Rainbow Weaver: Tejedora del Arcoiris - Linda Elovitz Marshall | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Native South American experience, environmental poverty, recycling, art, heritage | |
| A story set in a modern-day Guatemalan Mayan village about Ixchel, a weaver’s daughter who wants to learn the trade. But with little thread to go around, Ixchel needs to improvise. Bilingual book, although we will only be reading the English sections. | |
| Equality’s Call - Deborah Diesen | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Civil rights, women’s rights, activism, democracy equality, freedom | |
| A non-fiction rhyming picture book about the struggle to extend full citizenship and voting rights to all Americans. | |
| The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses - Paul Goble | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Native American folk tales, animals, nature | |
| Winner of the Caldecott Medal for 1979. Goble adapts a folktale about a girl separated from her people who comes to live among horses. | |
| The Rough-Face Girl - Rafe Martin | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Native American folk tales, shame, familial abuse kindness | |
| An adaptation of an Algonquin folk tale with striking parallels to Cinderella. The rough-faced girl has been scarred and disfigured by being forced to do not just her own work but her sisters’, but is beautiful where it matters, in her heart. | |
| Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman - Alan Schroeder | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Black experience, slavery, oppression, liberation father-daughter bonds | |
| A fictionalized biography which covers only Tubman’s youth and shows her experiences as a slave to set the stage for her escape and eventual work as an abolitionist. | |
| The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle - Allison Inches | |
| Audience: Children | Format: Picture book |
| Themes: Recycling, environment | |
| A whimsical story about the “lifecycle” of a plastic bottle, from petrochemical to bottle and finally showing up on a clothes tag as “recycled materials”. | |
Saturday Afternoons, 2 PM
Reading for older children and young adults; no craft projects.
| Women in Art - Rachel Ignotofsky | |
| Audience: All ages | Format: Portrait biography / artbook |
| Themes: women's rights, cultural representation, international art and artists | |
| An illustrated book featuring 50 women artists from all over the globe, with a short profile of each. We will be reading a selection of profiles and not the complete book. | |
| The Redheaded Princess - Ann Rinaldi | |
| Audience: young adults | Format: Novel, historical fiction |
| Themes: Prejudice, social mores, religious intolerance, coming of age | |
| The future Queen Elizabeth I grows up surrounded by intrigue and manipulation. | |
| How They Met - David Levithan | |
| Audience: Young Adults | Format: Short story collection |
| Themes: romance, relationships, LGBTQ, growing up, acceptance | |
| A collection of stories about young adults falling in love, mostly in high school settings. There’s about a 50/50 split between queer and straight love stories. | |
| The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros | |
| Audience: Young adults | Format: Biographical fiction |
| Themes: Hispanic/Latino experience, class/poverty, feminism, oppression, family, hope | |
| A collection of semi-fictional vignettes about the life of a Mexican-American girl in Chicago in the 1950s. | |
| The Second Bend in the River - Ann Rinaldi | |
| Audience: Young adults | Format: Novel, historical fiction |
| Themes: Native American experience, settler/colonial period, cultural exchange, conflict, romance | |
| The daughter of a pioneer family in Ohio in the early nineteenth century overcomes her fear and befriends the Shawnee leader Tecumseh. | |
| January’s Sparrow - Patricia Polacco | |
| Audience: Children (older children to young adults) | Format: Illustrated short novel |
| Themes: Black experience, life under slavery, solidarity, liberation | |
| Sadie and the Crosswhite family flee their lives as slaves in Kentucky and settle for a time in Michigan on their way to Canada. Escaped-slave hunters soon seek them out. | |
| La Línea - Ann Jaramillo | |
| Audience: Young adults | Format: Novel |
| Themes: Hispanic/Latino experience, immigration, sibling bonds, surviving trauma | |
| Miguel and Elena go on a dangerous journey to cross the US-Mexico border and join their parents in California. | |
| Jars of Hope - Jennifer Roy | |
| Audience: Children (older children to young adults) | Format: Illustrated chapter book |
| Themes: Holocaust, anti-Semitism, oppression, nonviolent resistance, solidarity | |
| An illustrated biography for young readers of Irena Sandler, who was a key figure in rescuing 2500 children from the Warsaw ghetto during the German occupation of Poland. | |