On Thursday evening, the Callaway County Library District Board of Trustees accepted a letter of intent submitted by Marty Wilson with the Holts Summit Community Empowerment Foundation to open a library in a recently renovated space in Summit Plaza. The proposal offered to waive the first two years of rent for the new library.

Every summer, libraries around the country pull out all the stops to deliver extra programming and exciting events to engage communities, especially children, in reading. Preparing an engaging summer reading program is nearly year-round work. Why do we do it? We do it to celebrate the joy of reading, of course, but also to help stop the phenomenon known as the “summer slide,” where children often lose ground in the reading and math skills they gained throughout the school year.

Keep grooving to that beat! Research suggests that music benefits our brains, beginning at birth and continuing on into our golden years. And music can help ready kids for reading, too.

This, year our community voted to read “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders the the Birth of the FBI” by David Grann for this year’s One Read program. Over the last 17 years, several nonfiction titles have been selected, but this is the first time that a true crime story has been chosen. The community is given the summer to read the book in preparation for related programming, including an author talk, in September.

If you’re fascinated by local history, you’ll be excited about the library’s new Community History Archive. Debuting this month at archive.dbrl.org, this site offers a searchable archive of local historical images and documents.

Between 1854 and 1929, over 250,000 orphans and unwanted children were taken out of New York City and given away at train stations across America. Did you or someone in your family ride the Orphan Train?