KC Public Library Blog

Pick up a book by award-winning author Sandra Cisneros or discover a novel that you might like if you enjoy Cisneros’ work in this recommended book list. Cisneros visits the Library on April 16, 2009, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of her classic The House on Mango Street. 

We’ve all seen them, they walk among us everyday. Some are more obvious than others. Here are a few ways you can spot them. They will probably be walking at a pace that will make you have to change course and go around them. They are usually male although every once in a while you’ll see a girl fall victim to this stigma. If you look hard enough you can witness their casual indifference towards work or goals. I’m talking of course about slackers.

Learn all about Sacagawea (sometimes spelled Sacajawea), the Shoshone woman who accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their famous expedition, or Lewis and Clark in these books at the library.

Check out some of the poetry, prose, and plays written by Langston Hughes, the Missouri-born writer who became a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, or learn more about his life and work in these books at the library.

Renowned dancer and choreographer Karole Armitage will talk about her career at the Library in April. Learn more about modern dance and its dancers, watch this dance form on film, or check out a few movies choreographed by Armitage.

The Libraries of Greater Kansas City have joined The Big Read to celebrate the Tobias Wolff novel Old School through a series of talks and workshops, movie screenings, book groups, a public discussion with Wolff, and a regular radio broadcast. This book is a modern classic about an ambitious but insecure teenager attending an elite prep school in the early 1960s who competes in a writing contest in which the prize is a personal meeting with a visiting famous author – Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway.

So, go Old School and read this novel, check out a few of the authors featured in this work, pick up a novel with a prep school theme, or read some more work by Tobias Wolff.

Six readers gathered at the Plaza Library on Sunday, March 22 to discuss the second novel from local author, Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life. Comments and perceptions focused on the realistic and sympathetic, but not always likeable, characters.