Children’s author Deedy will be guest speaker
It’s been a while, but the Friends of The Gilmer County Library will hold their first annual meeting in two years Saturday, April 23.
The meeting, which is open to the public, will be held in the downstairs Anita Summers Discovery Space at the library located at 268 Calvin Jackson Drive. A silent auction and short presentation of the year’s business at 1 p.m. will be followed by guest speaker, award-winning children’s author Carmen Agra Deedy, at 2 p.m.
The group of local library boosters traditionally meets annually at the end of its fiscal year to discuss the year’s business, then enjoy either a guest speaker or live music. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this will be their first meeting since 2019.
“Anyone who’s interested in coming to find out about us or to see Carmen, they’re welcome to come,” said Nan Flickinger, Friends of the Gilmer Library president. “We don’t meet in the summer (until) August, so this is our big thing at the end of our fiscal year.”
Deedy is the author of 12 children’s books including “The Library Dragon,” “The Cheshire Cheese Cat,” “The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet!” and “14 Cows for America,” a New York Times bestseller. Her latest book, “Rita & Ralph’s Rotten Day,” was released in 2020.
Deedy has previously been a guest speaker the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Institution. She and husband John McCutchen, a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who entertained at the 2019 Friends of the Library meeting, are part-time residents of Cherry Log.
“We had scheduled her before, but, with COVID, we haven’t had a meeting (in so long),” Flickinger said.
The local public library can always use more friends, and there are more opportunities for volunteering now that the library has fully opened back up and restarted its schedule of educational programming, Flickinger confirmed.
“We provide funding for resource materials and library events,” she said.
One big way the friends raise funds for the Gilmer library is The Bookshelf, a used bookshop located near the library entrance. The shop is staffed entirely by Friends of the Library volunteers.
“We always need people (at The Bookshelf). If they can’t do it on a committed regular basis, they can be on the substitute list,” Flickinger said.
The friends have also done well recently with selling books on Amazon, which also benefits the local library, she noted.
“We had a big donation of books from someone who passed away last fall. Those books have been a godsend as we’ve been trying to get back on track with COVID. We’re still selling them on Amazon,” Flickinger said.
The annual meeting, which is free to attend, will cap off a Friends of the Gilmer County Library membership drive happening this week.
“We are working on building (our numbers) back up. We’ll have tables set up during the day as people come in and out of the library,” Flickinger said.