The library is currently open Monday through Friday from 10:00am-5:30pm and Saturday 9:30am-12:30pm. The Children's Room and Archives are open by appointment. Please call for details: 207-582-3312.

Programs & Services

Reading Challenge 2017

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Are you looking for something different to read?

Feel like you’re in a “reading rut”?
Willing to try a new author? Or two?
Have we got an idea for you!  We are trying something a little different this year – a READING CHALLENGE!
Gardiner Public Library
READING CHALLENGE
2017
A graphic novel
An author whose name contains a set of double letters
The first book you see in the library
A book written by a Maine author
A book that is becoming a movie this year
Reread a favorite book from your childhood
Two books on the same topic – one fiction and one non-fiction
A book with a protagonist who has your occupation
Book with an award sticker or claim on the cover – Newbery, New York Times Bestseller, MSBA (Maine Student Book Award)
A book written by an author you have NEVER read before
A book recommended by a family member
A book you SHOULD have read in high school
A book published in the year you were born
A book with a one word title
A New York Times bestseller
A book written by a celebrity
A book with an ugly cover
Listen to a mystery
A book of poetry
A book you can finish in a day
A book based on a fairy tale
A YA (Young Adult) bestseller
A book with a number in the title
A book with over 400 pages
A book you started but never finished
An historical novel set before 1900
A book set in the future
A book set on another world
A book with more than two authors
A biography or memoir

 

                 
Sometime between now and December 31, 2017, read a book that would fit each of these categories – no, silly, not one book that fits ALL of the categories!  You’ll have to do a little research, talk to folks about what they are reading, get some ideas from others, if you’re feeling REALLY lucky you could take a chance and ask a librarian for help.
Once you finish the challenge, bring it back to us, and we’ll enter your name in a drawing!
If you would like a copy of the Reading Challenge, come on in, we have plenty available.
Ann Russell, Technology Librarian

YAfter School Program

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Once a week the library listens for the sound of twenty or more middle-schoolers eagerly bounding through the doors of the library and heading for pizza in the Hazzard Room.  A bus from the Gardiner Area Middle School brings them down to socialize, do homework and experience the library in new ways.

While chatting with the students, I learned that they come for a variety of reasons but being able to chat with friends they don’t see during the school day is a big reason to come.  After the pizza is devoured, they roam the library and enjoy the freedom they have to visit the youth/teen room, the archives, the children’s room and anything the library has to offer.  
In the archives they’ve discovered the old yearbooks which show their parents and sometimes their teachers when they were in high school.  Piper from Pittston, with the help of Dawn Thistle, our archivist, discovered who had lived on the land where her house now sits in Pittston.  Upstairs in the children’s room, three girls were using the puppet theater to act out a novel they were assigned to read to ‘make our homework more fun.’  Who knew that Hemingway could be performed with puppets?!  
Another student told me it was ‘boring’ to go home alone as Mom didn’t get home from work until 4:30 and older siblings who have driving licenses weren’t around either.  They help each other with homework, use their devices unhampered and roam freely from room to room as they choose.  Several students have been coming for the three years the library has had this program to “see old friends and make new ones” and would come every day if there were a bus.  The library, not a bad place to hang out!
Diane Potter, Gardiner Library Association Guest Blogger

Book discussion groups at the Gardiner Public Library

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I would like to tell you about the book discussion groups we offer here at the Gardiner Public Library. If you would like to join one of these talks, just let us know at the front desk. Copies of all the books are usually available behind the desk for each group. We have three different groups:

RIP-pers (Readers Into Paranormal) Books is a group that discusses paranormal books and meets on the first Tuesday of every month at 6:00. Their next book is Relic by Douglas Preston, and they will meet Tuesday, February 3th.
Our regularbook discussion group that meets about every 6 weeks and has been going on the longest of all the three groups. Next time this group meets is Tuesday, January 20th, at 6:00 and they will be chatting about the book A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash.
“Books to Movies” is a group that discusses books that have been made into a movie. We try to do it as close to the movie as possible. Our next talk is on Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn on Tuesday, January 13th, at 6:00. 
You are welcome at any time to join one or more of these groups.