Fitzwilliam Town Library

Starts Feb. 7, 10-11am Join your friends and neighbors for a good cup of coffee, goodies, and all of the news!

Tues. Mar. 10, 3:45pm Movie Day- Big Hero 6 by Margi Preus. Popcorn!






Tues. Mar. 17, 3:45pm St. Patrick's Day Party. Make a Celtic knot bracelet, hear a traditional story. and Refreshments!






Tues. Mar. 24, 3:45pm Make traditional pysanky (Ukrainian Easter Eggs). Grade 3 and up.






Tues. Apr. 7, 3:45pm Jr. Book Group- West with the Moon by Margi Preus. Snacks, skits and fun. Books are available at the Library.

Wed. afternoons at 3:45,
Children of all ages are invited to come to the Library and read to "Maya", a trained therapy dog.

Man's best friend can do a lot more than fetch and roll over. Research now suggests that dogs can actually help children learn to read.

For young kids, one of the big challenges in learning to read is the embarrassment of making mistakes. Reading to dogs provides a simple solution -- a non-judgmental, comforting furry friend who "listens" and takes the pressure off a child as he stumbles.

Studies have begun to show conclusively that children who read to an audience perform much better when the audience is a dog as opposed to an adult human or a group of human peers. The theory is that because the dog (usually a trained therapy dog) is attentive and nonjudgmental, the child feels more comfortable working through any difficulties sounding out the words or assembling the sentences conceptually knowing the dog won’t mock or laugh, but only support.

For children who are beginning to read, or are a little behind developmentally, or suffer from dyslexia, autism, or learning disabilities, an environment with a friendly companion like a professional therapy dog (or even a well-trained family pet) can create a safe atmosphere where they can work out their difficulties but not feel trivialized by classroom peers or fear disapproval of adult authority figures.

The Fitzwilliam Town Library supports the needs and interests of our community by offering information, experiences and ideas in creative ways.

Adopted by the Board of Trustees on March 3, 2014

Weather advisory- If the schools are closed, it is the Library's policy to close as well.

Friday, Feb. 20 at 7:00

A multigenerational tale of a widowed Latino father trying to hold his family of 3 fractious daughters together with the bond of carefully prepared meals. The food preparation scenes will keep you spellbound and can be appreciated on many levels: cooking lesson (really!), act of love, devotion, offering of sacrifice, parental love from a man who has a hard time saying I Love You. His daughters, a repressed Catholic, a liberated high schooler, and a 'modern woman,' just won't conform to his standards of proper Latinas. Then Raquel Welch, a nosy, in-your-face widow comes on the scene, and the fireworks begin. But there's the food. Always the food, beginning, middle, and end. Latino Refreshments!

For Adults (Book Party on Mon. Mar. 9, 7pm)
Books available at the Library. When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Read the New York Times' review of this book here. Refreshments!