Blog Entries

We're excited to share the fantastic news that "The Collectors: Stories," edited by A.S. King and written by the author along with nine other talented writers, and published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, has clinched the prestigious 2024 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature!

A huge congratulations to the entire team behind this collection of stories that has captured the hearts of readers everywhere.

It’s that time of year again! Time to make the annual trek to the County Collector’s office to pay taxes. Between the cost of this and Christmas, our bank accounts are lighter at the end of the year. As you take the time to review your bill this month, please note the taxes you pay to support Missouri River Regional Library (MRRL). Twenty cents is levied per $100 assessed valuation of your personal property/real estate taxes. This is the formula used to determine the amount of library tax you owe.

Many of our patrons may remember when the library rented the old Highway Administration building at 209 Adams Street, including the entire parking lot for patron and staff use. When library staff moved from that building in 2019 and the County purchased it, the library began renting spaces from them.  Over the last couple of years, the County has needed more parking for their own staff and the library has had to be adaptable.

Whether it be the customer service you receive in person or over the phone, to our programming offerings, or even how you search for a book in our catalog, the patron experience is something I take very seriously as the director of this library.  For many years, the way you search for materials on our catalog website has been the same. This has its advantages --- it’s familiar, you have it bookmarked, it does what you expect it to do, right?

This Place of Promise: A Historian’s Perspective on 200 Years of Missouri History by Gary R. Kremer has been chosen for Missouri River Regional Library’s 17th annual Capital READ.  Conceived of as a way to commemorate Missouri’s bicentennial of statehood, this unique work presents the perspective of Gary Kremer, one of the Show-Me State’s foremost historians, as he ponders why history played out as it did over the course of the two centuries since Missouri’s admittance to the Union. 

The Library has chosen Elise Hooper’s historical fiction, Fast Girls: A Novel of the 1936 Women’s Olympic Team, as this year’s community read, known as Capital READ and now in its 15th year.  

Hooper has written a thoroughly absorbing historical fiction novel with about the history of the first women’s Olympic Team, the athletic training involved, and the journey to the exciting, yet tension-filled 1936 games in Berlin, Nazi Germany.

The book centers on three main “real-life” women and a host of others who make this book so appealing. 

Since 2006, I've led a book discussion group called Fiction at Noon with my coworker Kathy (now retired). We are lucky to still have most of the original participants and have added new friends along the way.

This year, we proposed a year of mystery to the groups and, as a result, have read the works of several good mystery writers. Two of my favorites this year have been "Magpie Murders" by Anthony Horowitz and "Test of Wills" by Charles Todd.

When Karen Piper’s Dad, Earl Piper, finds himself without work in the seventies, he takes a job at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in the middle of the California’s Mojave desert.  The family is uprooted from their Seattle home where Mr. Piper had worked at Boeing until staffing cuts left him jobless.  His new job at China Lake lands him in the precarious position of main engineer on the Vietnam-era Sidewinder missile. His days are devoted to analyzing and attempting to correct the accuracy of this legendary missile.

Each January, most of us make resolutions we hope will result in a better version of ourselves.  Generally, eating less and exercising more top the list.  For those of you who may want to save money, volunteer, get smarter, meet new people, and read more, don’t forget about the public library.  We can help you accomplish all these things and probably a few you never thought of.

With the holidays upon us, it's time to think about buying presents for our people, right? Some of the best gifts you can give a reader are ones related to authors and titles they love.  The following is a list of websites that will help you locate a unique literary or book themed gift idea for the bibliophile in your life. Have fun! Buy a little something for yourself...or perhaps, your favorite librarian?

This year’s Capital READ title is by Melissa Scholes Young, a Hannibal native who now lives in Washington, DC, and teaches creative writing at American University. She explores the universal theme of escape and going home again in her first novel, Flood.

Last year I read the book The Thriving Library: Successful Strategies for Challenging Times. It’s the kind of book library directors read for fun, and it was professionally speaking just the right book at the right time.  There was a quote in this book that has stayed with me for well over a year.