HARLEM VALLEY — For many, summer may be a break from academics, but local libraries have been working to promote reading outside of the classroom through a series of fun and hands-on programs. Beginning in July, the Amenia Free Library, the NorthEast-Millerton Library, the Pine Plains Free Library and the Millbrook Free Library hold their annual summer reading programs. This summer’s theme, in accordance with the New York State 2011 Summer Reading Program, is “One World Many Stories.” Children are encouraged to keep a book log of their summer reading and to come for a wide range of weekly activities at the local libraries. Each library has taken a slightly different approach toward the overarching goal of getting children to read, which appears to have been met across the board.In Amenia, each Friday at 10:30 a.m. brings something new and exciting. At the annual treasure hunt on Aug. 5, veteran participant and Amenia resident, Tegan Moeller, 10, described the joy of attending each summer.“I can’t wait for next Friday’s ice cream party,” she said. “You never want to miss the last two [sessions]. They’re the best!”The ice cream party on Aug. 12 will mark the culmination of a successful 2011 session in Amenia and will include a very special guest llama. As Tegan and her friend, Mira Salmons, 6, rummaged through their bag of collected treasures, she excitedly showed her father, John, the new book about the solar system that she chose for this week. Tegan explained that she picked this book because science is one of her favorite subjects.Standing by was Webutuck Central School first-grade teacher and treasure hunt organizer Heather Farr-Kilmer. She has been volunteering with the program for the last few summers and this year had the help of her daughter, Caroline, 11, and friend, Joe Butts, 12, with the hunt. Farr-Kilmer described the program as a good opportunity for her to meet some of her incoming students before the start of the new school year. While blowing bubbles (one of the found treasures) with her friend, Dayra Raoms, 8, Michelle Esquivel, 9, said that she particularly loved when Bee Bee the Clown came on July 8 to perform magic and tell stories. Previous activities at the Amenia library have included musical performances, sing-alongs, crafts and a show and tell, many of which have incorporated storytelling. The summer session at the Millbrook Free Library has experienced similar success, with every program filled to capacity and including a wait-list of eager participants. Highlights have been a Harry Potter night before the movie’s release and a Thomas the Tank Engine-themed day. The final upcoming summer activities, for children ages 4 and older, will be Lego events on Tuesday, Aug. 23, at 3:30 p.m. and Wednesday, Aug. 24, at 6:30 p.m. Registration is required.Rhiannon Leo, director of the NorthEast-Millerton Library, explained her library’s innovative approach to promoting summer reading through the exchange of tickets for books read. Children can use their tickets to enter a raffle of prizes, which Leo said has encouraged and motivated the young readers throughout the summer. The library had 82 children participate this summer, surpassing its goal of 75, and the various events throughout July and August have been filled to capacity. Beginning with the Summer Reader Kick Off Party on June 26, activities have included family game nights, a Hawaiian luau in honor of the American Girl Doll of the Year, Kanani, and knitting classes. The library has also offered reading help from certified elementary teacher, Sarah Bellora. While the focus of the local libraries’ summer reading programs has been largely on younger children, the Millerton library has also offered Read for the Green, a program that pays adolescents ages 12 to 18 $3 for each new book that they read and review on the library’s blog. According to Leo, this initiative has also been a big success in promoting summer reading for an older population. On Saturday Aug. 13, at 11 a.m., the NorthEast-Millerton Library will host an end-of-summer reading celebration that will include a performance of Bubble Trouble with Jeff Boyer, followed by ice cream and the summer reader prize announcements. The Pine Plains Free Library will hold its final two Summer Story Adventures, as part of the New York summer reading program, for children ages 4 to 8 on Saturdays, Aug. 13 and 20, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. In addition to in-house events, the library also has offered a summer online reading program, which provides reading recourses and recommendations and allows children to log their reading online. The summer reading programs aim to reinforce reading skills throughout the summer so children enter the new school year ready for success and with a passion for books.
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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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