News & Reviews - Basalt Regional Library

StART Fresh! A Student Exhibition

12/3/2020

Calling all artists ages 5-18! What does a fresh stART look like to you? Both the Art Base and the Basalt Regional Library invite you to participate in an upcoming exhibition at the Art Base on January 5-8, 2021.

Using a medium of your choice on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, complete this sentence:

My ideal world looks like…

Don’t know where to start? Your ideal world can be represented literally, symbolically, or through words! The only rule is to stay within an 8.5 x 11 sized piece of paper.

Important Details

Please return artwork and artist form below to the Art Base or the Basalt Regional Library no later than December 16, 2020 @ 5PM.
Free art kits are available at both the library and the Art Base for this project.
Exhibition Dates: January 5-9, 10AM-5PM
With your artwork, please fill out artist information form below.
Artwork can be picked up at the Art Base beginning January 13, Tuesday – Friday, 10-5PM.

Questions? Contact Abby Gierke, Art Base Programs Manager, abby@theartbase.org or 970-927-4123 or Caroline Cares, Youth Services Assistant Director, ccares@basaltlibrary.org or 970-927-4311 ext. 1021

Grab and Go Activities: Snowflake Ornaments

12/2/2020

For this week’s Grab and Go Activity we will be making ornaments that you can hang on your Christmas tree or use to decorate your house this winter! This week we will be offering two different ornament crafts; one for younger children and one for teens.

Grab & Go Activity: Fall Felt Bookmarks

11/25/2020

Quit dog-earring your books (and ours, too) by creating your own felt corner bookmarks! By following the instructions below, you’ll create your own book-monster or heart-shaped bookmark to slide over the corner of your book, saving your place for later.

Grab & Go Activity: Paper Lanterns

11/18/2020

With the end of daylight savings, brighten up your evenings with handmade mandala paper lantern grab and go activity!

Are you working on this activity with younger kids? Let them decorate the lantern with pens however they want!

Do you need a challenge? Put a detailed mandala on every side of your lantern and take your time coloring them in.

Native American Heritage Month Booklist

11/17/2020

November is National Native American Heritage Month. Honor, celebrate, and learn from this land's first people this and every month by reading books written by Indigenous authors. We've put together a list of our book recommendations for you to check out!

Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land by Toni Jensen

Toni Jensen grew up in the Midwest around guns: As a girl, she learned how to shoot birds with her father, a card-carrying member of the NRA. As an adult, she's had guns waved in her face in the fracklands around Standing Rock, and felt their silent threat on the concealed-carry campus where she teaches. And she has always known she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of indigenous women, on indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten. In Carry, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America.

Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Kali Fajardo-Anstine's magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in the American West. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado--a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite--these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. “Any Further West” follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In “Tomi,” a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, “Sabrina & Corina,” a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual.

Sabrina & Corina is a moving narrative of unrelenting feminine power and an exploration of the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and an eternal sense of home.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer

The received idea of Native American history -- as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's 1970 mega- bestselling Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee -- has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear -- and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence -- the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival.

Grab & Go Activity: Recycled Magazine Jewelry

11/9/2020

With this week’s Grab & Go Activity, you’ll be able to create beautiful beads in a variety of shapes and sizes out of old magazines!

Grab & Go Activity: Peace Crane Project

11/4/2020

Connect with students from across the country by participating in our Peace Crane Project grab and go activity!

“The Peace Crane Project invites every student on the planet to fold an origami crane, write a message of peace on its wings, then exchange it with another student somewhere in the world. The Project builds friendships, strengthens hand-eye coordination and writing skills, teaches geography, exposes students to new languages and cultures, and EMPOWERS YOUTH to make a difference in their community, country, and world.” - The Peace Crane Project

We’ll be exchanging our Peace Cranes with a student group from Round Hill, Virginia!

Are you working on this activity with younger kids? Fold a Peace Dove instead of a Peace Crane for an easier origami pattern!

Grab and Go Activities: Dia de Muertos Sugar Skulls

10/28/2020

Celebrate Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) by decorating your very own calavera - a skull made of solid sugar! Follow the instructions below for either a Basic Calavera or a Literary Ofrenda. You can even submit your creation to our contest!

Dia de Muertos is a Mexican holiday celebrated October 31st through November 2nd honoring friends and family who have passed away. But Dia de Muertos is not a day of mourning - it's a day of celebration! By creating ofrendas (family altars) at home and their loved one’s graves, families pay their respects with gifts of calaveras, Aztec marigolds, and the favorite foods and drinks of the departed. It is believed that the souls of loved ones return to enjoy the gifts from their ofrenda and celebrate with their living relatives.

Calaveras, Spanish for “skull” are made from sugar and decorated with beads, feathers, foil, or icing to express the personality of the deceased. But don’t try and eat them - dried sugar skulls are as hard as a rock, and often decorated with inedible materials!

Grab & Go Activity: Pumpkin Painting

10/19/2020

Skip carving pumpkins this year and paint one! Use your endless imagination to create a spooky, funny, or book themed pumpkin. Activity kits for this project can be picked up from the library’s east entrance on Wednesday, October the 21st, from 12 to 6PM. With a few more basic materials from home, you’ll be able to create your pumpkin masterpiece!

Materials

In Your Kit:

Mini Pumpkin
1 paint brush
4 small cups of paint
1 small cup of glue
1 small bag of sequins
1 sheet of pumpkin painting examples

From Home:

More paint colors

Instructions

Plan your design
Use the paint, glue and beads to create a painted pumpkin

Grab & Go Activity: Paper Mache Animal Crossing Costume

10/8/2020

Celebrate Halloween in style as a character from Nintendo’s best selling game of 2020, Animal Crossing! Grab & Go Activity kits for this project can be picked up from the library’s east entrance on Wednesday, October 14th, from 12 to 1PM. With a few more basic materials from home, and the following instructions, you’ll create your very own paper mache costume!