Dear friends,

Before the fire, we were working on our posters to pick our mascot animal for 2012.

           

  

Before the smoke damage that caused by the fire, we were running our weekly activities; reading days, arts&crafts, games clubs etc.

   

Dear friends,

Soon the posters will be cleaned and return safety to our library so that we will be able to choose our favorite animal . And very soon, our books will be back and we will open our doors once more to get together, to play, to read, to create and to share.

Dear friend, please study hard, read a lot, play and have fun until we will meet again at our branch.

with all our love

librarians and volunteers of RS

Due to the smoke and fire damage, Richmond Square Branch is closed until February 2012.

Thanks for your understanding.

During the last few months many authors and artists visited Richmond Square.

Authors

End of April, the author Shane Peacock was with us for an author reading.

A strong influence on our members… Award winning author Alma Fullerton was at our branch at April 28th for to talk about overcoming life challenges, stories and to read pieces from her books. Please take a look at this link to read more about the activity.

 

   

April 29th at 3 pm… Rina Singh was telling us stories from around the world.

 

We have met the author of “The Secret Life of Owen Skye”, “After Sylvia” and “Dear Sylvia”,  as Alan Cumyn was our guest thanks to the grant from Canada Council of Art.

Artists and more…

Puzzle Theatre is always welcomed at our branch. Creative group from Montreal loved by all ages…

Alive in Light with Amber

Our members had their first yoga class last April. We listened, we moved and we had fun.

 

During the Summer 2011, our branch participated many community events; including Little Burgundy Community Market and Little Burgundy Festival.

 

Little Burgundy Festival 2011

 

 

Little Burgundy Community Market

 

 

This summer, Richmond Square organized a book club between July 15th and August 18th. 22 children from the Little Burgundy Community attended and they have read over 350 books.

The activity, aiming to make the best of children’s summer days; not only encouraged them to read more but also write, discuss, recommend and analyze the literacy piece. It also brought children together with weekly reading activities and book club meetings.

This is how we started and how we progressed:

Members wrote their names on our board and prepared their book logs. For each five books they read, they put a star besides their names.  Every book that they read has to be at their reading level or a little bit above. Children got our opinions before they started reading the books they chose. One to one contact with each child showed great benefits. Here is one example: One of our members, at the age of 11, who preferred to read only graphic novels, discovered the beauty of the novels and found out what kind of books she likes to read.

The children had to write summaries/ book reports or fill a recommendation form for almost all the books that they read. They practiced analyzing texts and ameliorated their language skills.

The best and maybe the most enjoyable part of the book club was the “book club meetings”. Giving children a feeling of belonging, they gathered together every Thursday to talk about the books they read that week.   We had dedicated volunteers like Tammi that came every meeting to talk about the books she read, we had Tyndale volunteers like Priscilla who never missed one meeting before she returned to her country and we had Tyndale Community Center Youth and Families Program director Tamara Hart who tried to join our meeting as much as she can and talked about the recent books she read.  Loulou Bakar, Steve –Captain Catalyst were the other guests who sat around the table, listened about the different stories of the books that they’ve never heard, talk and discuss about the themes of the books, ask and answer the questions during the meetings.

August 18th, we had the last book club meeting.  We gave all the participants a little gift from the library and also with a raffle we picked one reader who got the special gift.

After hearing about the plight of our flooded library and the hundreds of damaged books, the CBC’s drive home show has organized an amazing book drive for us!

June 2011, the Montreal community donated  books to the Montreal Children’s Library Richmond Square Branch and the Tyndale St. George’s Community Centre. Donations will benefit programs at the both Richmond Square and at Tyndale.

The Montreal Children’s Library would like to extend a big thank you to all those who donated their time and books. Without the book drive and renovation would not have been a success.

In particular we would like to thank:

The CBC
Oink Oink
Chapters/Indigo
Babar

Late March showers brought surprises to our newly renovated library at 2011.

After heavy spring rains, the Richmond Square Branch was sad to announce that we have had a flood in the English picture book section of our library.

Rains on the night of March 10th penetrated the roof of the Tyndale St. Georges Community Centre, damaging nearly 200 books from our collection. In addition the floor and the ceiling of the library were damaged by water.

   

Access to the library was reduced during this period.

Renovations occurred from May 13 to May 27.  Once the branch was completely renovated and cleaned, the undamaged books were replaced on our shelves.

We thank you for your patience while we re-organize and renovate.

I would also like to extend a thank you to many of the community members young and younger who practiced their ABC’s while placing books back on the shelf.

   

As part of the Blue Met Festival, Richmond Square was pleased to have author Alma Fullerton come and speak.  Mrs. Fullerton is now an avid reader and writer, but that was not always the case.  Growing up she had difficulty learning how to read, but with hard work and a great deal of strength she is now a published author.  Mrs. Fullerton shared her stories about learning how to read, and taught us about the importance of hard work and perseverance.  Literacy changed Mrs. Fullterton’s life. More than an author, Mrs.  Fullerton is also a painter. She shared with us some of the many different version of a book cover she created for her book Burn.  Everyone was excited when Mrs. Fullterton signed some of her books for us!

Alma Fullteron is a writer and painter based in Toronto.  She is the author of 4 books, and was a 2008 Governor General’s Awards Finalist, and a 2011 finalist for the CLA Children’s Book of the Year.  Check out more Mrs. Fullteron’s website, for more information for her many books and awards.  http://www.almafullerton.com/Welcome.html

Author and illustrator Antony Stanberry was here with his team; Justin Stanberry, Jermaine Smith and Sylvia Stanberry Smith for to show us how to imagine and draw superheroes. They even gave examples from the history and celebrated our Black History Month.

You can see their works here.

It was February 14. It was Valentine’s Day.

Reading Takes on a Whole New Dimension

To mark Halloween, Richmond Square organized two amazing events for our kids.  First we organized a craft event along with local artists and book maker Kate Battle. The event was a scary adventure into the world of pop-up book making.  Ghoulish goblins and ghosts were pasted, painted and drawn into their books.

The excitement of the appraoching candy-loving holiday was palpable as the kids spoke of their costumes while making the books.  Here are a few photographs of the event:

Story Time, Warts and All

In the hopes of causing some nightmares, Richmond Square was able to find an evil Witch and Warlock to give up their precious potion making time to come and share a few Halloween stories with us.  Dressed in their Halloween best, the two shared countless stories of Monsters and Ghosts with us.

Then another story guest teller, Alexie Doucet, came in and shared a conte about the birth of the stars with us.  The Quebec folk tale comes from les Îles de la Madeleine which are way out in the middle of the St. Lawrence.  The story was told in the both French and English, and was made to come alive with beautiful illustrations drawn by the story teller.  In the end, the conteuse quebecoise handed out sand dollars to the kids in celebration of the story and the gift of the stars.  It was a beautiful event, and much loved by the kids.

Richmond Square wishes to thank our Witch and Warlock for their time away from making potions , and our conteuse, Alexie Doucet,  for her gift of the story about the birth of the stars.

Nowadays the Little Burgundy Community is not having any difficulty finding a librarian from Montreal Children’s Library, no matter what event they are attending.

There was no way to keep your librarians away from Little Burgundy Festival at the Oscar Peterson Park on that sunny Saturday, September 12th.  With our books, membership cards, flyers and balloons, we were at our modest spot in the park to meet with families, get to know community and government organizations, and establishments that have committed themselves to the development of Little Burgundy.

From early morning until the late afternoon when the music started, we introduced our fall schedule, welcomed new patrons (a.k.a members, guests) and read stories. We thank the Little Burgundy Coalition (especially Vincente Perez) for their kindest invitation, and Pricilla from Tyndale Community Center Volunteer Team for her kindest support.

If you think that librarians only like festivals for their food and music, you are absolutely mistaken; we are also big fans of eating healthy fresh fruits and vegetables, and that is why we are meeting with community children at Marché Citoyen de la Petite-Bourgogne.  September 18th was the first date with the Marché Citoyen team and October 2nd and November 6th, with the other organizations from the community, we took the time to welcome the children whose parents were happily busy with the apples and tomatoes of the open market.

We will continue to participate at Community Market events and let you know when.

During that time we will be more than happy to learn about your events in the community.  We don’t want to miss a chance to meet with you… Please send us an e-mail or call our Richmond Square Branch to let us know what is happening in our lovely Little Burgundy.