04/22/24 @ 4:15pm – 04/22/24 @ 5:15pm Discovery Room Winfield Public Library Youth, grades 3-5, have an opportunity to tackle the Winfield Public Library’s 2024 Reading Challenge together! April’s challenge is to read “a bestseller in a genre you don’t normally read.” We thought April would be the perfect month to read the instant bestseller by Alan Gratz, Two Degrees. Wildfires, hungry bears, hurricanes… this climate change survival novel is an action-packed page-turner. We meet every Monday after school from 4:15 pm-5:15 pm and read the book together each week. Youth may pop in and join us at ANY TIME!  Attendance of the club meetings is not required to participate.

04/24/24 @ 2:30pm – 04/24/24 @ 4:00pm Community Room Winfield Public Library Winfield Public Library’s Afternoon Book Club will host a discussion of Bittersweet:  How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain on Wednesday, April 24 at 2:30pm in the library’s community room. In this follow up to her previous bestseller, Quiet:  the Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” Cain uses her mix of memoir, storytelling, and research to explore sorrow and longing.  Copies of the book will be available at the front desk beginning on March 26. More from the publisher: Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy when beholding beauty. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death – bitter and sweet – are forever paired. A song in a minor key, an elegiac poem, or even a touching television commercial all can bring us to this sublime, even holy, state of mind – and, ultimately, to greater kinship with our fellow humans. But bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It’s also a way of being, a storied heritage. Our artistic and spiritual traditions – amplified by recent scientific and management research – teach us its power. Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don’t acknowledge our own sorrows and longings, she says, we can end up inflicting them on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know – or will know – loss and suffering, we can’t turn toward each other. And we can learn to transform our own pain into creativity, transcendence, and connection. At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.

04/29/24 @ 4:15pm – 04/29/24 @ 5:15pm Discovery Room Winfield Public Library Youth, grades 3-5, have an opportunity to tackle the Winfield Public Library’s 2024 Reading Challenge together! April’s challenge is to read “a bestseller in a genre you don’t normally read.” We thought April would be the perfect month to read the instant bestseller by Alan Gratz, Two Degrees. Wildfires, hungry bears, hurricanes… this climate change survival novel is an action-packed page-turner. We meet every Monday after school from 4:15 pm-5:15 pm and read the book together each week. Youth may pop in and join us at ANY TIME!  Attendance of the club meetings is not required to participate.

04/29/24 @ 5:30pm – 04/29/24 @ 7:00pm Off Site Join us for an evening of information and exploration at Chaplin Nature Center! The evening will begin at 5:30pm with a program on the biodiversity and ecological importance of the Arkansas River presented by Elizabeth Walker, Director of CNC.  “Hundreds of species of animals rely on the Arkansas River,” says Walker.  In addition to sustaining resident species, including eagles, the Arkansas River plays a vital role in the migration patterns of numerous animals.  Following the program, attendees are invited to hike Chaplin’s nature trails. The River Trail, at a distance of just under one mile, extends down to a sandbar along the Arkansas River. Other trails on site explore prairie and wooded areas. This program is free and open to all ages with no registration required. Please note that participants must provide their own transportation to the Chaplin Nature Center.  The program is intended as a companion to “Rediscovering the Arkansas River,” a presentation by Hannes Zaccharias that will be hosted by the Cowley County Historical Society and Museum on Monday, April 15. Learn more about Chaplin Nature Center.

04/30/24 @ 10:00am – 04/30/24 @ 11:00am Community Room Winfield Public Library meeting