Seymour Public Library

"Read All About It" is a monthly newsletter published by Seymour Library. The newsletter is also available free at the library, usually on the first day of each month.

Fill August days with crafts, books

Seymour Library's “Make a Splash @ Your Library!” activities continue in August with Storytime on the Lawn at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 3. It’s our last Storytime for the summer. We have a few more craft activities planned, too. Children are invited to make a shiny, sparkly mermaid at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 4; registration is required. A special craft day is planned for all day Wednesday, Aug. 11, when children can drop in any time and make any of the projects that were featured over the summer.

Children should bring in their reading logs before Labor Day to be eligible for the prize drawing. Don’t forget: There are summer reading programs and prizes for teens and adults, too! Teens can bring in their reading logs by Labor Day for a chance to win a gift card. Adults are eligible for weekly and grand-prize drawings; pick up a “Water Your Mind: Read” log for dates and details.

Book club extends invitation to teen readers

Our Monday night Coffee and Conversation book group is reading young adult books this summer and invites teen readers or those interested in young adult literature to attend. The next book and discussion is "Going Bovine" by Libba Bray at 7 p.m. August 16. Read more about the book here.

Lincoln events take center stage in September

Seymour Library has been selected to host the traveling exhibition “Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Time, A Man for All Times” throughout September. The exhibit, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, features reproductions of Lincoln’s words, supplemented by letters, photographs and images of the Civil War. Seymour Library is one of 40 libraries and National Park historic sites nationwide to host the exhibit.

Friends of Seymour Library also are sponsoring a visit by author Thomas J. Craughwell, whose book “Stealing Lincoln’s Body” was the basis for the PBS documentary of the same name. He will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 16, at a fund raiser sponsored by the Friends of Seymour Library. Tickets for the event, which will be at Cayuga Community College, are $12 and available at the library and Creekside Books and Coffee in Skaneateles.

Cayuga Reads books feature local connection

A little more than a century ago, the city of Auburn was at the center of a sensational story. It was at the prison here that the notorious murderer Chester Gillette was executed, his punishment for murdering his pregnant lover while boating in the Adirondacks. Three books based on the Gillette case have been selected for this year’s Cayuga Reads community reading project: “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser, the classic novel based on the case; “A Northern Light” by Jennifer Donnelly, a novel for young adults that tells the Gillette story from the point of view of a 16-year-old hotel worker; and “Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited” by Craig Brandon, a nonfiction look at the case. Book discussions and programs will take place this fall.

Read more about Cayuga Reads here.