Estherville Public Library 613 Central Avenue Estherville, Iowa 51334
Phone: 712-362-7731 Fax: 712-362-3509
One of the most informative places on the Internet. Thanks for dropping by.
Carolyn and John Walz visited the Florida Supreme Court Library on Monday, March 24, 2008. Carolyn is pictured with Billie and Eric in the area of the library where all the law books are maintained. The insert is of Carolyn and Billie in Billie's office.
New Events
Be sure to check our "Events" page to keep current with what is happening at the Estherville Public Library!
Our MySpace Page
Be sure to check our MySpace website from time-to-time. MySpace gives everyone an opportunity to connect and communicate with people and organizations all over the world. Click HERE to connect!
Sanborn Kafe
Beginning August 1, 2006, the Estherville Public Library Sanborn Kafe will be open. The Kafe is located on the lower level of the library in a newly redecorated room made possible with funds from the Sanborn Trust. Coffee and tea will be available Tuesday through Friday from 10:30 A. M. to 3:30 P.M. The public is invited to come to the library and join their friends for coffee or tea during those hours. If they wish to bring treats to go along with their coffee they are welcome to do so. The Kafe is free and is intended to be a meeting place for people who just wish to get together and visit. A copy of the local newspaper and miscellaneous magazines and paperbacks will also be available. The Kafe will also be a good place for working people to enjoy spending their lunch hour with their own "lunch to go" or sack lunch. See you at the Sanborn Kafe!
ILCC Core Book
The Core Book for ILCC this year is A Sand Country Almanac by Aldo Leopold. This book is available at the Estherville Public Library.
Published in 1949, shortly after the author's death, A Sand County Almanac is a classic of nature writing, widely cited as one of the most influential nature books ever published. Writing from the vantage of his summer shack along the banks of the Wisconsin River, Leopold mixes essay, polemic, and memoir in his book's pages. In one famous episode, he writes of killing a female wolf early in his career as a forest ranger, coming upon his victim just as she was dying, "in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.... I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view." Leopold's road-to-Damascus change of view would find its fruit some years later in his so-called land ethic, in which he held that nothing that disturbs the balance of nature is right. Much of Almanac elaborates on this basic premise, as well as on Leopold's view that it is something of a human duty to preserve as much wild land as possible, as a kind of bank for the biological future of all species. Beautifully written, quiet, and elegant, Leopold's book deserves continued study and discussion today. Amazon.Com
ALL IOWA READS
Digging to America by Anne Tyler has been chosen as the All Iowa Reads book selection.
"Tyler (Breathing Lessons) encompasses the collision of cultures without losing her sharp focus on the daily dramas of modern family life in her 17th novel. When Bitsy and Brad Donaldson and Sami and Ziba Yazdan both adopt Korean infant girls, their chance encounter at the Baltimore airport the day their daughters arrive marks the start of a long, intense if sometimes awkward friendship. Sami's mother, Maryam Yazdan, who carefully preserves her exotic 'outsiderness' despite having emigrated from Iran almost 40 years earlier, is frequently perplexed by her son and daughter-in-law's ongoing relationship with the loud, opinionated, unapologetically American Donaldsons. When Bitsy's recently widowed father, Dave, endearingly falls in love with Maryam, she must come to terms with what it means to be part of a culture and a country. Stretching from the babies' arrival in 1997 until 2004, the novel is punctuated by each year's Arrival Party, a tradition manufactured and comically upheld by Bitsy; the annual festivities gradually reveal the families' evolving connections. Though the novel's perspective shifts among characters, Maryam is at the narrative and emotional heart of the touching, humorous story, as she reluctantly realizes that there may be a place in her heart for new friends, new loves and her new country after all." Publishers Weekly.
All Iowa Reads is a program of the Iowa Center for the Book, State Library of Iowa. The purpose of All Iowa Reads is to encourage Iowans statewide to read and talk about a single title in the same year. This book is available in the Estherville Public Library collection. Call us to get your name on the list to read it.
