The Lake Andes Public Library is a bright and colorful place far from the days of an old, mildewy, musty building full of just books. These days, the Lake Andes Public Library is a hub of activity, constantly full of kids enjoying all that the library has to offer. One of the most important aspects of the library is the safe space that it offers for both children and adults to explore their reading interests. The library also offers services that cannot be found other places in town such as free WIFI and eight public computers that have printing capabilities. In addition to the summer reading program, librarian, Mary Jo Parker, offers different activities for every day of the week. Mondays are food and fun days. Tuesdays the focus is on gardening whether it creating a three sisters garden or learning about plants that help butterflies and bees. Wednesday is a craft day where Mary Jo has a different craft for each age level which includes beading, macrame, string art, painting, crocheting, etc. Thursdays are the K-5 STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Mary Jo comes up with different projects geared toward different age groups. One example of a project would be having the kids build a macaroni tower to try to get it to hold different objects. Finally on Friday the focus is on physical activity. The kids have organized games of Red Rover and the library has an entire closet dedicated to physical activity equipment including gloves, balls, skateboards, safety equipment, etc funded through their Well-Connected Communities grant. There is never a dull moment at the Lake Andes Library with endless possibilities of activities and skills to be learned.

This summer’s reading program’s theme is Adventure Begins at the Library. During this summer’s reading program, Mary Jo has been assisted by a wonderful team including Becky Beeson who teaches the Monday lessons on nutrition, Marlene Janis, Madelyn Janis, Madeline Derry and Katelyn Dvorak who all help with different groups during programming. At the end of the summer reading program, through funding from a grant, Mary Jo offers the children who have taken part in the summer reading program an incentive trip. Mary Jo understands that kids have other activities during the summer so she makes it very easy to be able to qualify for the end of the summer reading program trip. To qualify for the trip, a child needs to attend 80 percent of the 30 days of programming that is offered and read between 320 and 1500 pages depending on their age. The incentive trip this year is still in the works of being planned out and will be announced very soon.

Mary Jo Parker has been the librarian at the Lake Andes Public Library for the past 11 years. After she retired from teaching Family Consumer Sciences at Andes Central, she wanted to still be social and help keep the town library open. The librarian at the time told Mary Jo, it would just be a part time position but then as Mary Jo’s time progressed at the library, she began to take over more responsibilities until eventually she was hired on as the head librarian in 2013. When Mary Jo first took over the position, she did not know everything that needed to be done in order to run the library, even though she had worked there previously before taking the head librarian position. After a suggestion by fellow librarian, Brenda DeHaan, to attend the Summer Institute for Librarians, Mary Jo was able to take her role to a new level as librarian. Each year the institute focuses their summer class on a different topic, helping to build a librarian’s skills in order for them to be as successful as they want to be.

What Mary Jo has enjoyed the most about working at the library is being able to meet new people and networking. Working with the youth of Lake Andes leaves Mary Jo’s days filled with constant thoughts of the funny and fun things that the kids have to say throughout the day. She also enjoys being able to give the kids experiences like those that she taught when she was teaching at the high school. It allows her to teach the youth of Lake Andes skills that are no longer taught in school, but are very much of use and practical in today’s world.

When asked what role reading has played in her life, Mary Jo recounts that reading and a library have played a lifelong part in her story. Her mother was a teacher and taught Mary Jo how to read even before she was of school age. When she was old enough, Mary Jo would stop at the library on her way home from school. She remembers her library growing up to be a comfortable welcoming place. For Mary Jo, reading has the power to open the world. Reading is knowledge and knowledge is power. Her favorite book of all time was given to her as a Christmas present when she was in third grade. Mary Jo received the book, Heidi, which also happened to be one of her mother’s favorite books. She still has the book and it has been read and reread so many times that it is literally falling apart. Mary Jo’s favorite part of the library is the children’s section. It is full of books, lots of activities and usually a bunch of happy, smiling, talkative children.

The City of Lake Andes provides the library with a good budget. The library tries to order new books quarterly depending available funding. The library is open to book donations as long as the book is no older than ten years old. There is no annual book sale that the library puts on, instead the library has books for sale all the time stored in one of their several book closets. There is also a library board that meets quarterly to discuss library matters. Those on the board are Chairman, Sally Florey; City Council Representative, Connor Florey; Librarian, Mary Jo Parker; Carla Pesicka; Dawn Kitchenmaster; Joanne Stegmeier; and Brittany Schoenfelder.

Mary Jo has some recommendations for series for different age groups. For children reading at a second-grade level, she recommends a vet series of books that the library has that focuses on how to take care of different animals. For third through fifth graders, Mary Jo recommends the Dork Diaries and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. For fifth graders on up she recommends dystopian books including the Harry Potter and Star Wars series. An author that she would recommend for teen readers would be Colleen Hoover.

In addition to the wide range of books that the library offers, they also offer DVD rentals, public computers, printing, a small meeting room, eBooks, graphic novels, magazine, etc. The library also has 1000 books before Kindergarten program that allows families with young children to foster a love of reading and receive a free book for every 100 book milestone along the way. The library is open Monday through Saturday from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. with extended hours on Wednesday until 7 p.m. For more information on current programming or events happening at the Lake Andes Public Library, follow them on their Facebook page.

A library is more than just books and that is especially true of the Lake Andes Public Library. Their particular library is full of skills to be learned, activity and adventure in both physical terms and through reading. Lake Andes is very lucky to have such a wonderful library available to them as well as a librarian who does as much as she can to enhance and improve not only the library, but the Lake Andes community as well.