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Summer Break 2022 Wrap up
August 8, 2022
Oh, where has the time gone?
It’s a wrap for Summer Break 2022. Thank you to all of those who participated in the 2022 Summer Break Challenge. Queen Charlotte collected her earned prizes. Have you? Please collect any earned prizes by August 20, 2022, at your local branch location. Charlotte Football Club winners will be selected from completers by a drawing via Beanstack on August 15, 2022 and will be contacted via email.
A total of 9.1 million minutes were logged for reading.
Over 70,080 badges earned.
More than 45,000 activities completed.
The Summer Beak Team hopes you enjoyed reading more and participating in different activities.
We put forth a challenge to the community to beat this year’s numbers for 2023. Do you have it in you?
Top Five Books Read
Here are the top 5 books read all summer by our Summer Break readers! Are they what you expected? What were your favorite summer reads?
- Holy Bible
- Richard Scarry's Bedtime Stories
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Prison of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
- Dogman by Dav Pilkey
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The 2022 Summer Break program is brought to you by Charlotte Mecklenburg Library with additional support from Wendy’s, Charlotte Football Club's Greater Goals, and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.
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OverDrive will sunset the legacy OverDrive app on January 31, 2025. After this date, the OverDrive app sunset will be complete on all platforms.
Users with Fire tablets running Android 9 or higher can install the Libby app instead.
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For more details on how to make the transition from OverDrive to Libby, see Switching to Libby from the OverDrive FAQs.
This University City Regional branch closes for the final time on February 1 at 5:00 PM. The new University City Regional branch is located at 5528 Waters Edge Village Drive Charlotte, NC (behind the Applebee's on J.W. Clay Boulevard).
The Grand Opening will be on February 8 from 9:30am to 4:00pm. All invited to partake in the festivities. Activities for the day include family storytime, an Artist Talk with Anne Lemanski, Mother Minter, a 360 photo booth, gaming, a puppet show, music, a dance acrobatics performance, and face painting.
For details about specific events at the new University City Regional branch grand opening see this events page.
The Library is excited to share that the Sugar Creek branch will be getting a new location and a new building. Work on Sugar Creek will commence in early 2025 and the new building is scheduled to be completed in 2027.
The new library will double in size and is planned to be located near the Ella B Scarborough Community Resource Center. The architect selected for this project is Perkins + Will.
The Library is looking forward to sharing soon how the community can share thoughts and support for the new branch location.
This blog post was written by Brandon Lunsford, Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room Volunteer
In December 2024, the Carolina Room received a generous donation from the Wing Haven Foundation, forming the new Wing Haven Collection. This collection documents the history of one of Charlotte’s most exceptional hidden gems—Wing Haven Garden and Bird Sanctuary. Located at 248 Ridgewood Avenue in the Myers Park neighborhood, Wing Haven began as the private residence and garden of Elizabeth and Eddie Clarkson. The couple built their home in 1927 as one of the first in the new neighborhood. Elizabeth’s interest in gardening transformed the once barren red clay landscape into a lush paradise of color. Her interest in birds and their habitats soon led to the creation of a sanctuary, attracting both feathered visitors and human admirers. Friends, neighbors, and professional ornithologists were welcomed to enjoy the gardens, where birds even felt comfortable enough to fly through the house and perch on Elizabeth’s arms as she played the piano. It was likely one of the only places in the world where birds and people coexisted in such harmony. In 1970, the Clarksons established the Wing Haven Foundation, officially opening the gardens to the public.
The collection also preserves the decades-long love story between Elizabeth and Eddie, which began in 1924. Author Mary Norton Kratt describes their courtship in her book, A Bird in the House: The Story of Wing Haven Gardens: “Elizabeth Barnhill told Eddie Clarkson on their first date in Boston, where he was working and where she was attending the New England Conservatory of Music, how she and her mother had raised white-winged doves.” After five years of courtship in seven states and one foreign country, Eddie and Elizabeth became engaged. After Eddie’s father urged him not to ‘let that pretty, little auburn-haired girl get away,’ Eddie drove to Uvalde, TX to propose to her.
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Eddie returned to his native Charlotte to build a home and a garden for his new bride following her precise instructions, and she remained in Texas until it was finished. While they were apart they wrote to each other daily–often multiple times on certain days. These letters, now part of the collection, offer a glimpse into their unwavering devotion. So far, we have processed their letters dating from July 1925 to April 1927—over 850 in total! Every letter from Elizabeth begins with some variation of “To My Precious Boy,” and every response from Eddie is addressed to “My Most Precious Girl.” Eddie often slipped wildflowers into his letters, which remain beautifully preserved almost 100 years later.
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This correspondence continued throughout their 60-year marriage until Elizabeth’s passing in 1988. Eddie followed in 1993, having spent their entire lives together in the home and gardens they built with love.
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The Wing Haven Collection is divided into two main series. The first focuses on Elizabeth Clarkson and includes decades of correspondence between her, Eddie, family and friends, as well as photographs, slides, personal materials, and promotional content about Wing Haven. This material spans from the 1920s to the 1980s, with the bulk dating from the 1920s to 1940s. The second series is based around internationally known garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence, who moved to Charlotte in 1948 and cultivated her own garden nearby at 348 Ridgewood Avenue.
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In a city that is rapidly changing, stepping into the house at Wing Haven feels like travelling back to 1927. The home remains untouched since the Clarksons moved in—the original furniture, piano, and even the small window openings designed for birds to enter still exist as they were.
It’s a rare opportunity to experience Charlotte as it was a century ago and to witness a living tribute to a timeless love story.
Stay tuned for more updates on the Wing Haven Collection! To find out more about Wing Haven and its special history, visit Wing Haven.
Prod Test February
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Black History Month Recorded on the Microphone
February 28, 2025
This blog was written by Lawrence Turner, adult services librarian at South County Regional Library
The thing about Black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.—Henry Louis Gates, professor and literary critic
Granted, Black History Month is the shortest month of the year but there exists a wealth of information and personal stories that may continue into March and beyond. A book search in the library catalog for “African Americans” and “interviews” brings up a treasure trove of experiences that reflect and document the country and environment with its warts and shining moments. An interested reader can find an eye-opening collection to explore.
A detailed look at African American history covers the institute of slavery and the experiences of those enslaved. One compact book is Slavery Time When I was Chillun edited by Belinda Hurmence. It’s library catalog entry describes the book as: Twelve oral histories of former slaves selected from the more than 2000 interviewed as part of the Slave Narratives of the Library of Congress for the Works Progress Administration in 1936.
Multiple books have been based on those interviews and Charlotte Mecklenburg Library has its share with some only available as ebooks and others only available at the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room, housing archives and special collections.
The Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room is a valuable resource for investigating segmented groups like North Carolina Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in North Carolina From Interviews With Former Slaves along with events years later as Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories by Ellen Levine (interviews from the 1950s and 1960s). Currently, the location is available for visit by appointment only with email as the preferred contact.
These books provide a varied history of African Americans would be an appealing read for many concerning life experiences and aspirations. Look at the life of Clarice Freeman of Houston, Texas, as a case in point. In Lift Every Voice: a Celebration of Black Lives, selected older African Americans are interviewed for their perspective on success and looking to the future. Freeman, 101 years-old, an educator and community leader, shared her fight for racial equality as an economic driven concern. She said: “After college, I joined the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE. One of my first experiences with the group was shutting down a restaurant. A group of us decided to go have dinner at this place. And, of course, the manager met us at the door and told us, ‘No Blacks.’ We said, “We’re hungry. We’re not going away until you let us in.’ The manager closed manager closed the door and locked it, not allowing any customers in, including white people. Another time, we were fundraising, and I asked a local CEO for a donation. He looked at me and said, ‘When are you people going to stop begging and support yourselves?’ I said, ‘Well, when we become CEOs just like you, when we have jobs that pay us just like you pay your employees, maybe we will have enough money to support ourselves.’”
Look for Lift Every Voice and other related books in this Black history booklist.