In a year when truth was routinely stranger than fiction, Hartford Public Library customers sought a wide array of stories, often seeking escape, but also looking for inspiration and a way to understand the world around them.
We are excited to share with you the titles that were most popular in Hartford in 2020.
Most Checked Out Adult Books of 2020:
- Becoming by Michelle Obama
- Where the Crawdad Sings by Delia Owens
- The Guardians by John Grisham
- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Most Checked Out Teen Books in 2020:
- Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto
- Fairy Tale by Cyn Balog
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama
- Demon Slayer by Koyoharu Gotoge
- Dog Man: Fetch 22 by Dav Pilkey
- Unicorn of Many Hats by Dana Simpson
- Avatar The Last Airbender
- (Tie) Dog Man: For Whom The Ball Rolls by Dav Pilkey; Dork Diaries 14: Tales From A Not So Best Friend Forever by Rachel Renee Russell.
Other popular titles include Pug by Ethan Long and Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus by Mo Willems.
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Hartford Public Library will be holding a winter coat giveaway on Thursday, January 7.
The giveaway will take place at Barbour Library, 261 Barbour Street, from 2:30 to 3:30 pm.
Coats will be distributed on a first-come, first served basis. Limit one coat per individual. The coats were donated by Button Up Connecticut, a non-profit organization whose mission is to collect gently used winter coats and distribute them to residents in need all throughout Connecticut.
The Library on Wheels will also be on hand to distribute free books, new youth books, and craft supply bags.
“We are always looking for ways to meet people where they are,” said Bridget Quinn-Carey, HPL’s president and CEO. “Sometimes that means giving people access to books. Sometimes it means helping people keep warm. At this event, we excited to be able to offer both to our community.”
Irene Blean, manager of Barbour Library, believes that is hard for people who are struggling with basic needs to be open to what the library has to offer. A person can’t focus on the possible joy that books and movies can provide if they are hungry and cold. The winter coat giveaway is an opportunity for Hartford Public Library to attempt to care for the whole person.
“Now more than ever, we need to creatively address the basic needs of our customers to be able to continue to provide library services. Our customers need ways to hold beauty in their minds, especially during this troubling time. The arts, whether a good story through a book or movie, music, poetry, and creative art, provide our customers with opportunities to experience something positive,” Blean said.
Michelle Lipar, an intern from the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, was inspired to organize the event by witnessing the dedication of HPL’s branch managers to their communities. She had been invited to participate in events across the city and wanted to make her own contribution.
“I can see how they are working hard to meet the needs of their customers, even when the buildings are closed,” Lipar said.
She thought providing coats could meet some of the needs of the library’s customers, especially as the weather turns colder.
“I am looking forward to the event because it provides opportunities to meet and talk with our customers in person, and to see if there are ways we can help beyond providing coats. In-person contact has been very limited during the pandemic, so I appreciate the opportunity to safely interact with the community. I’m hopeful that we can host additional coat distribution events at other branches in the future,” Lipar said.
For more information about Hartford Public Library, visit hplct.org or call 860-695-6300. For more information about Button Up Connecticut, visit buttonupconnecticut.org.
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The spirit of giving was alive Tuesday afternoon at the Barbour Library’s Winterfest event.
HPL handed about 40 bags of food, donated by Foodshare, in just a 20 minutes.
“Food scarcity is a regular thing in this neighborhood, even more so with the pandemic,” Blean said.
The hour long event was a microcosm of a lot of what HPL has to offer. Programming Manager Liz Castle distributed free books. Children’s librarian Victoria Palmatier shared program opportunities and crafts for kids. Michelle Lipar, a social work intern from the University of Connecticut, handed out her contact information and a list of library resources.
Irene Blean, manager of the Barbour Library, showed her customers how to make an easy potpourri recipe that would warm up a home nicely. Barbour Library customers would love to have their library fully open, Blean said, and while the pandemic makes that impossible right now, events like these can still provide quality library services.
Blean has held four outdoor events this fall, including a health fair and voter registration and Census drives. She plans to offer Zoom events in January. “We are always looking for ways to connect with the community,” Blean said.
Palmatier plans to hold a virtual children’s event later in the month, helping kids put together their Covid-19 time capsule. By allowing children a place to thinking about how much their lives have changed, they also have an opportunity to wrestle with the emotional issues brought up by the pandemic, Palmatier said.
“I think they are surviving the pandemic with astounding resiliency,” Palmatier said.
The needs are palpable, Blean said, and HPL is poised to help in any way it can. “More than one person has said to me, thank you for not forgetting about us,” Blean said.
by Steven Scarpa, Manager of Communications and Public Relations
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“A stunning work of art that reminds readers Alvarez is, and always has been, in a class of her own.” —Elizabeth Acevedo, National Book Award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller The Poet X
Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves—lines from her favorite authors play in her head like a soundtrack—but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words.
Afterlife is a compact, nimble, and sharply droll novel. Set in this political moment of tribalism and distrust, it asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including—maybe especially—members of our human family? How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves? And how do we stay true to those glorious souls we have lost?
“A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.” –St. Petersburg Times
In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters–Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé–speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human costs of political oppression.
“Poignant . . . Powerful . . . Beautifully captures the threshold experience of the new immigrant, where the past is not yet a memory.” —The New York Times Book Review
Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez’s beloved first novel gives voice to four sisters as they grow up in two cultures. The García sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía—and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try find new lives: by straightening their hair and wearing American fashions, and by forgetting their Spanish. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home—and not at home—in America.
“Charming and funny . . . Mesmerizing . . . Wonderful.” —USA Today
Yolanda García–Yo, for short–is the literary one in the family. Her first published novel, in which uses as characters practically everyone she knows, was a big success. Now she’s basking in the spotlight while those “characters” find their very recognizable selves dangling in that same blinding light. But turnabout is fair play, and so here, Yolanda García’s family and friends tell the truth about Yo. Her three sisters, her Mami and Papi, her grandparents, tías, tíos, cousins, housemaids, her third husband: they take turns telling their side of the story, ripping into Yo and in the process creating their own endearing self-portraits.
“Original and illuminating.”—The New York Times Book Review
In her most ambitious work since In the Time of Butterflies, Julia Alvarez tells the story of a woman whose poetry inspired one Caribbean revolution and of her daughter whose dedication to teaching strengthened another.
Julia Alvarez has won a large and devoted audience by brilliantly illuminating the history of modern Caribbean America through the personal stories of its people. As a Latina, as a poet and novelist, and as a university professor, Julia Alvarez brings her own experience to this exquisite story.
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