Library #18 Niagara Branch

The Niagara Branch is located on Porter Avenue near D'Youville College. We were greeted by Mr. Hoth, the branch manager, who loves his library. He gave us a tour of the library and told us about the many ways the library serves the community. There are many titles in Spanish, and ESL materials, too. The library hosts lots of tutoring, student groups, early childhood activities and fun community events.
We stopped here after going to Mayor Brown's Reading Challenge Celebration in the morning. Kids who read books and wrote reports on them over the summer are invited to the Convention Center to have breakfast with the Mayor! He gives away tons of really big prizes like bikes and laptop computers, and kids get to have their picture taken with him on stage. This year the girls won gift cards to Kohl's and WalMart. Yay! After a quick lunch at Elmwood Taco and Subs we were on our way home.

Library #17 Newstead Branch in Akron

On Wednesday we visited the Newstead Branch Library in the cute town of Akron. What a cool, contemporary building! We loved the wooden beams on the ceiling, the very high windows (the place was full of natural light), and it even had a walk out veranda with benches for reading in nice weather. The children's section had clouds suspended from the ceiling along with butterflies. This library had many small touches that gave it a community feel: a coupon exchange box, a puzzle and game table, with a puzzle of the United States partially assembled and some paintings displayed from local high school art students. We met the librarians, they were very nice and very proud of their library. We checked out some books on pumpkin carving, and some more fiction for the girls.
We also went to nearby Akron Falls Park, an Erie County Park--we hiked the slow moving stream with giant boulders, it was amazing! We took Sookie, our dog, and she loved it! At the end of the hike is the falls; worth the effort. What a great park, just on the outskirts of the Village of Akron. Great day!