Events Calendar

Growing Voices Music Class is an interactive class for caregivers and their children, birth-5, to play, learn, and bond with music. In our classes we sing, play instruments, dance, and have fun together!

*Note: this event takes place at the Lussier Community Education Center 55 S. Gammon Rd*

Do your cooped-up kids need a warm, free place to run and be loud? Come experience Anji Play! In this weekly award-winning program, kids lead the play while adults step back and observe with deep curiosity.  This educational approach rooted in True Play was created in Anji County in China. Madison Public Library is a pilot site for developing a library-based Anji Play model. Open to all ages. No registration required. 

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

Presented by BMO Harris Bank, Madison Public Library Foundation's 2024 Lunch for Libraries event will feature Tommy Orange. He will appear live at Monona Terrace to discuss his latest novel, Wandering Stars. Join us for this annual fundraiser on April 23rd at 12:00 p.m. 

The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There, delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

"For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you.” —Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

Oakland, 2018. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is barely holding her family together after the shooting that nearly took the life of her nephew Orvil. From the moment he awakens in his hospital bed, Orvil begins compulsively googling school shootings on YouTube. He also becomes emotionally reliant on the prescription medications meant to ease his physical trauma. His younger brother, Lony, suffering from PTSD, is struggling to make sense of the carnage he witnessed at the shooting by secretly cutting himself and enacting blood rituals that he hopes will connect him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal is equally adrift, experimenting with Ceremony and peyote, searching for a way to heal her wounded family.

Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage and is a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people.

Purchase your tickets today for Madison Public Library Foundation’s annual Lunch for Libraries fundraiser! Lunch for Libraries proceeds fuel year-round author programming of the Wisconsin Book Festival, presented by Madison Public Library in partnership with Madison Public Library Foundation. The majority of Lunch for Libraries proceeds go toward the Wisconsin Book Festival’s free, year-round author programming. A portion of Lunch for Libraries proceeds fund Madison Public Library youth literacy efforts. 

In conversation with Aaron Bird Bear.

In partnership with the City of Madison and Madison Public Library, the African Center for Community Development provides in-person assistance* to help offset housing costs by assisting residents with applications for services, jobs, and other financial benefits.

We provide help for people navigating application processes and filling out forms required for housing, immigration, food, health, and other community support services. For questions about the program, please call African Center at 608-957-5623 or 608-294-0066.

*Neither The African Center for Community Development nor Madison Public Library can provide legal assistance or advice.  We are not able to fill out applications on your behalf, or assess program eligibility. 

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

The River Food Pantry's Munch Truck will be stopping outside Goodman South on Tuesday from 3:10PM - 3:30PM.

About River Food Pantry & Munch Truck

Launched in 2016, Munch is our mobile meals program that delivers free healthy meals to children and adults in over a dozen low-income neighborhoods throughout Madison. Each meal contains a sandwich or main menu item, a fruit or vegetable, a grain, a treat, and a drink. Everyone is welcome to take home a free meal. No registration or ID is required.

Neighborhoods served by Munch have large populations of children eligible for free school lunch. To bridge the gap that exists when school lunch is not available, Munch operates up to 6 days per week, Monday–Saturday, any time school cafeterias are closed (including breaks and periods of remote learning).

For any questions or comments, please contact the Munch staff at munch@riverfoodpantry.org or (608) 661-1223.

Come be in community with other teens during this after-school program at Goodman South Madison Library! Every day after school teens are invited to decompress with art activities, video games, movies, board games, social time or quiet time to do homework together. Drop in or stay for the whole time - It Takes A Village is intended as a place for youth ages 12-19 to find their people, access resources, have fun, and rely on their village for support and wellness.

Need help with basic computer or Internet skills? Looking for assistance downloading library eBooks and audiobooks? We offer free one-on-one sessions on Tuesday and Thursday evenings!

Reservations required. Register online, in person, or call Lakeview Library at 608-246-4547.

Need help with basic computer or Internet skills? Looking for assistance downloading library eBooks and audiobooks? We offer free one-on-one sessions on Tuesday and Thursday evenings!

Reservations required. Register online, in person, or call Lakeview Library at 608-246-4547.

Need help with basic computer or Internet skills? Looking for assistance downloading library eBooks and audiobooks? We offer free one-on-one sessions on Tuesday and Thursday evenings!

Reservations required. Register online, in person, or call Lakeview Library at 608-246-4547.

Need help with basic computer or Internet skills? Looking for assistance downloading library eBooks and audiobooks? We offer free one-on-one sessions on Tuesday and Thursday evenings!

Reservations required. Register online, in person, or call Lakeview Library at 608-246-4547.