Teen Advisory Meeting!

Calling all Teens! The Library needs your help in deciding programs and activities that the library should plan for high school and middle school students.  Though we love programs that connect to books, we are looking for all ideas! Crafts? Gaming? Stranger Things Escape room? Movie night? We have a lot of ideas but we want to select the best for your age group!

Join us Tuesday, July 19 at 6 PM. We will provide the pizza and pop, you bring the ideas!

Fire Time Storytime!

Get ready to STOP, DROP and ROLL into our Fire Time Storytime with Miss Tammy and Miss Emily!

Meet us July 13th at the Aurora Branch or July 14th at the Dillsboro Branch. Each program begins at 11:00 a.m. Registration is not required, but is helpful for planning purposes. Please call 81-926-0646 to register.

Our feature story, of course, will be all about fires. After the story, we will break out into our “fire” themed stations which consist of movement games, sensory bins, and creativity stations. You will not want to miss the Take It, Make It Craft where spots are plentiful. As always, we will have our “field trip” outside to see our featured transportation. Photos and inspecting the vehicle will be our top priority while outside. But, wait…before you leave, you’ll have to “fuel up” with a grab-a-snack bag. We wonder who the lucky winner of our door prize will be this time? We look forward to seeing all you kids there!

Aurora Public Library District Presents: StoryWalk®!

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Please join the Aurora Public Library District in our StoryWalk® event between July 10 and July 24, 2022!  Take a walk at your leisure along Second Street in Aurora or around the Dillsboro Community Park in Dillsboro.  As you walk, you will encounter the pages of a picture book to read and questions to discuss.  Complete the story and scan a QR code with your smartphone or tablet to register for entries in the prize drawings for our Reading Moves You summer reading program.  Registration for summer reading is NOT required to earn prize entries!  Prizes will be drawn during the Summer Reading Sled Dog Finale on July 28, 2022.

The Aurora StoryWalk® will start outside the Aurora Public Library lower-level entrance and feature the book The Little Engine that Could, written by Watty Piper and reimagined by Dan Santat.  The Dillsboro StoryWalk® will begin by the soccer pavilion playground at Dillsboro Community Park and feature the book The Littlest Airplane, written by Brooke Hartman and illustrated by John Joseph.

The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, reimagined by Dan Santat      The Littlest Airplane by Brooke Hartman, illustrated by John Joseph

The StoryWalk® Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT and developed in collaboration with the Kellogg-Hubbard Library.  StoryWalk® is a registered service mark owned by Ms. Ferguson.

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Bleak Books with Olivia: Verity by Colleen Hoover

Have you ever read a book all the way through just to close it for the last time and say “wow, that was bleak”? Well, I’m here to make the case for those dark, dreary, haunting, and disturbing reads that keep you up at night long after you put them down. Welcome to Bleak Books with Olivia, your resident creepy book lover at the Aurora Public Library District.

I believe I am well overdue to hop on the Hoover Train. Her books have been flying off the shelves at our branches, and film rights have even been purchased already for some of her novels. Verity came to me in a peculiar way: I was in a long-distance book club with friends and we had already read It Ends With Us, another one of Hoover’s standalones. Although I wasn’t a massive fan of that book, my book club convinced me to give Colleen another try with Verity, and boy, I did not know what I was getting myself into.

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Verity introduces us to Lowen Ashleigh, a down-on-her luck author barely scraping by in New York City. She is about to be evicted when a wonderful opportunity caused by tragic events presents itself: fellow author Verity Crawford, who has experienced a James Patterson-level of success, was in a car accident and is catatonic, but her bestselling series remains unfinished. Jeremy, Verity’s husband, meets Lowen and asks her to take on the reins and ghostwrite for her to make the fans satisfied. Lowen hesitantly agrees, doubting her abilities, but is still whisked away to the Crawford estate, where she is meant to go through Verity’s notes and finish her series. She moves in with the family, including the couple’s son, Crew, and finds herself falling for Jeremy, the kindhearted pseudo-widow.

But, just up the stairs, Verity lies unconscious, but alive. Lowen can’t seem to shake the feeling that Verity is more aware and awake than first understood. This, paired with a frightening and disturbing manuscript found by Lowen that is seemingly written by Verity before her accident, slowly convinces Lowen that all is not as it seems.

This novel was stunningly unhinged. It was everything that modern Gothic fiction should be: terrifying, shocking, and a little absurd at times. Sure, there were some parts in this novel that made me roll my eyes at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, but for the rest of the novel, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. The end was breathtaking, to say the very least. I would recommend this book just based on pure shock value. Stick with horror, Colleen!

Thank you for joining me on this dissection of one of my favorite Bleak Books. I hope to see you again sometime soon! Please take a look in the Adult and Teen Fiction section at the Aurora and Dillsboro Public Libraries for my favorite Bleak Books, or check out our e-books on Libby. If you are looking for this specific title, you can use our catalog to locate it or ask a librarian for help! If you meet me in the library and have any Bleak Books suggestions, please let me know! I’m always looking for a new book to disrupt my life for a couple of weeks.

Summer Reading Storytimes

Join us for our Surprise on Wheels story time. Our time will start off with our story for the day, then after we will break off into our stations, where we will be having some exciting crafts and games. We will then head on out to see the Surprise vehicle that we have planned! You will also be able to take home a yummy snack and a craft to bring more of the fun with you. We will be at Aurora on July 6th at 11 am and at Dillsboro on July 7th. Both programs start at 11 am. Hope to see you there!