I’m going to be reading and talking about Dream of Night at the Boyle County Public Library on Thursday, May 20th at 7 pm.  This event will be in the Teen Room — yes, there is a Teen Room! (That’s the question everyone asks when I tell them where it is.)  No, there are no Teen Books in the Teen Room yet, but we (on the library board) are working on that.  There is a Teen Room, though, and it is very, very cool.  It is right at the top of the main stairs.  It looks like a cafe, except without any food.  There will be food there Thursday night.  Free pizza!  (Although Karl tells us it would be best to eat the pizza in the children’s library rather than the actual Teen Room :))  Wherever we actually eat the pizza, please come  and check out the book and the new Teen nook in Danville.  Books will be available through Centre College Bookstore for purchase and signing by yours truly.

I’ve been coming to the Danville-Boyle County Library since my mom carried me there on her hip.  I may have learned to read there.  I know I did lots of research on countless school reports over the years.  When I moved back to Danville, it definitely was a highlight of my homecoming.

The library had gotten bigger, but it still looked and felt the same.  Those in charge of expanding it over the years had kept the original lovely old building, kept much of the charm, just added more rooms of books.  Another massive expansion was undertaken a few years ago, and finally after much anticipation, the new library opened in January.  Again, the powers that be had the wisdom to keep the integrity of the place, keep the original parts, so when you walk into the new library, you still have a powerful sense of the old.  I can still sit in the room where I poured over encyclopedias as a kid (can you imagine kids going to the library to look at an encyclopedia today?) but I can also walk into a huge new room of fiction and another gigantic nonfiction room, I can sit in a room with a giant map or a giant globe, I can bring my kids to an enormous new kids space with dinosaur bones hanging from the ceiling and more computers than they could ever use, I can stand on the glassed in second floor and gaze at a glass sculpture by a world-renowned glass artist, I can sit in the garden where my name and my husband’s name and my kids’ names are etched forever in one of the bricks for future Henson-Ungs to see.  Danville isn’t a very big town, but we have an amazing library.  How lucky is that?