We are excited to welcome back in-house programs with lots of special visitors lined up this year!  Yearly favorite Debora Waz from the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson will be visiting the Belmont, Booneville, Burnsville, Iuka, and Ripley libraries to talk about animal friends found throughout Mississippi.  In Corinth, a presenter with a service dog will present a program about how to interact with them.  Participants will also make sock dog toys.

Branches in Belmont, Booneville, Ripley, and Tishomingo will have visits from community helpers, such as those from our fire departments, police departments, ambulance services, and more.  In Burnsville, Master Gardner Lena Mitchell will discuss plants and flowers grown in our area and provide small pots and seeds for participants to plant something to take home.

Participants at the Random Acts of Kindness program at the Anne Spencer Cox Library in Baldwyn will write letters to people in their community, while at the Blue Mountain Library, a program will take participants outside to create kindness messages on the sidewalks with chalk.

For those who cannot get to the library during daytime hours, several branches will host events at night and on Saturdays, including Family Togetherness game nights and Saturday basic sign language programs at the George E. Allen Library in Booneville and puzzle and Story Time events at Corinth.  The Iuka Library will even hold a Saturday Pokemon Adventure Day.

Rock painting activities will be held at the Tishomingo and Rienzi libraries.  Several branches, such as Booneville and Corinth, will have special programing for teen participants where they will do fun craft projects.

Those unable to attend a program can still stop by our branches for lots of fun activities they can do on their own.  Branches will have coloring and activity sheets, craft projects, in-house Scavenger Hunts, puzzles to put together, and other things to do at any time while visiting the library.  All branches will be conducting a Community Art Project where participants decorate a paper square and return it to the library for an art gallery.  And of course, all our branches will have reading logs to record books read during the summer, with incentives for meeting each week’s goal.

On our website, you’ll find daily suggestions for fun family activities that fit into our Summer Reading Program theme on the Suggested Family Activities page.   Daily recorded stories will continue on our YouTube channel and Story Walks® will be returning to many of our community walking trails.

Full schedule of events at all NERL branches