Events Calendar

READ and PLAY with your favorite baby or toddler! Reading, singing, talking and playing with your baby from the beginning is important because the roots of language are developing in a baby’s brain even before they can talk! Library programs are always free. Siblings and childcare groups are welcome.

Attention word lovers: exercise your brain by playing Scrabble with other adults!

Join other neighborhood families for a casual library playdate for babies ages birth to 17 months and their caregivers. We’ll feature open-ended play materials and lots of books! Siblings welcome.

READ and PLAY together with children under age 5! Engaging with books, songs and playful experiences all help children develop communication skills, patience, empathy, and pre-reading skills​ and helps to build a lifelong love of reading. Library programs are always free. Siblings and childcare groups are welcome.

READ and PLAY together with children under age 5! Engaging with books, songs and playful experiences all help children develop communication skills, patience, empathy, and pre-reading skills​ and helps to build a lifelong love of reading. Library programs are always free. Older and Younger siblings and childcare groups are welcome.

READ and PLAY together with children 5 & under! Stories, songs, and rhymes for about 20 minutes, followed by playtime and an art project. 

Engaging with books, songs and playful experiences all help children develop communication skills, patience, empathy, and pre-reading skills​ - and helps to build a lifelong love of reading.

No registration, free of cost, and older siblings are welcome!

READ and PLAY with your favorite baby! Reading, singing, talking, and playing with your baby from the beginning is important because the roots of language are developing in a baby’s brain even before they can talk! Library programs are always free. Siblings and childcare groups are welcome.

Do you have clothing or other fabric items that need mending? 

Volunteers from the Sewing Machine Project are offering free mending at Hawthorne Neighborhood Library every other Wednesday from noon - 2:00 pm. These helpful sewers mend clothing and can handle many other fabric-related repairs (exception: no zipper repairs).

Mending is done on the spot on a first come, first served basis. There’s no drop off or pick up, we do what we can do in the time allowed.

Drop in anytime between 12:00 - 2:00 pm!

Updated COVID-19 vaccines* at the Lakeview Library, administered by Public Health Madison & Dane County!

• Updated fall 2023 doses of Pfizer and Moderna available while supplies last. / coming soon
• Everyone 6 months and older is welcome. 6 months-17 year olds need a parent or guardian present.
• Walk-ins encouraged. Appointments are available but not required. Please visit https://publichealthmdc.com/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine/vaccination-appointments to book an appointment.
• *Eligibility is limited to those with no insurance or those who have limited insurance that does not cover vaccination. Those with insurance covering vaccines should visit https://www.vaccines.gov/ to locate a clinic or provider. PHMDC cannot bill private insurance.

Drop-in knitting. All experience levels welcome. Children under 9 must be accompanied by an adult for duration of program. Yarn and Needles provided for in-library use. For more information, contact Cassandra at charlan@madisonpubliclibrary.org or 608-288-6150. 

Visit the Dream Bus to browse books and other library materials, place or pick up holds, and sign up for a library card.

Learn more at dreambus.org

Please join us to play chess at our weekly, drop-in program! All ages and experience levels welcome.

Visit the Dream Bus to browse books and other library materials, place or pick up holds, and sign up for a library card.

Learn more at dreambus.org

Calling all kiddos and families! Join us for an afternoon of making! We will be joined by artist, Rita, and will be using our creative energy to make masterpieces!

Teacher Studio is a hybrid learning community for formal & informal educators interested in hands-on, maker-based learning. Educators of all kinds are invited to join this monthly meet up to explore concepts and practices to support hands-on making with their students. We'll zoom together with groups from around the midwest - Betty Brinn Children's Museum,  Fermilab Chicago, and Building Kids Children's Museum - while exploring a maker project in person together in the Bubbler room. This is a great opportunity to meet and connect with other maker centered educators locally as well as across our region! 

Questions? Please feel free to reach out to Bubbler Children's Librarian and cohost of the Teacher Studio Rebecca Millerjohn at rmillerjohn@madisonpubliclibrary.org or check out the website at: https://sites.google.com/wisc.edu/teacher-studio/ 

Join local artist Amy Mietzel for hands-on art projects!

Visit the Dream Bus to browse books and other library materials, place or pick up holds, and sign up for a library card.

Learn more at dreambus.org

Visit the Dream Bus to browse books and other library materials, place or pick up holds, and sign up for a library card.

Learn more at dreambus.org

Love anime, or want to get into it? Join us Wednesday evenings for Meadowridge Library's anime club!

Drop in knitting: Learn a new craft or work on that unfinished project with other neighborhood knitters.

Presented in partnership with the Center for East Asian Studies.

Through the eyes of two frontline journalists comes a gripping narrative history of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement centered around a cast of core activists, culminating in the 2019 mass protests and Beijing's brutal crackdown. 

Hong Kong was an experiment in governance. Handed back to China in 1997 after 156 years of British rule, it was meant to be a carve-out between hostile systems: a bridge between communism and capitalism, authoritarianism and liberal democracy. “One country, two systems” kept its media free, its courts independent and its protests boisterous, designed also to convince Taiwan of a peaceful solution to Beijing’s desire for reunification.

Yet this formulation excluded Hong Kong’s own people, their future negotiated by political titans in faraway capitals. In 2019, an ill-conceived law spear-headed by a sycophantic leader pushed millions to take to the streets in one of the most enduring protest movements the world has ever seen. Xi Jinping responded with a draconian national security law that sought not only to end the demonstrations but quash the “problem” of Hong Kongers’ identity and desire for freedom.

Reverend Chu, who believed Hong Kong had to carry the spirit of students at Tiananmen Square, saw his silver-haired comrades who birthed the city’s modern pro-democracy movement handcuffed and taken from their homes. Tommy, an art student radicalized into throwing Molotov cocktails, watched “braves” like him brutalized by police before his own arrest prompted him to flee. Finn epitomized the decentralized nature of the movement and its internet-fueled victories, but online anonymity couldn’t stop his life from unravelling. Gwyneth could predict her eventual fate when she chose to give up her career as a journalist to stand for election as an opposition candidate, and did it anyway.

In Among the Braves, Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin tell the story of Hong Kong’s past, and what the sacrifices of its people mean for global democracy’s shaky foundation.

In this novel two narratives intertwine- and each has the origin of the devastation of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and its impact on survivors to this day. Set in Chicago in the world of art galleries, and in Paris with a famed photographer, Makkai weaves past and present into a multi-generational story the New York Times called “emotionally riveting.”