It wouldn’t be summer without our Night Sky program, and this year we’ll get twice the fun! Our favorite astrono-educator, Bob Reichman, will present a virtual program and an in-person program in August. But you don’t have to wait for these programs to cross off this square – we’ve got lots of books that will show you what to look for up there. Start your search with Dewey numbers 520-523.

You may be familiar with our Friday morning Adult Services email newsletter, which keeps you up to date on upcoming events and library service updates. We’re now developing a series of newsletters that will alert you to a selection of new books that we recommend in a variety of subjects, including Biographies & Memoirs, Cookbooks, General Nonfiction, Mysteries, and Historical Fiction. We’re open to new genres and subjects, so please let us know what you’d like to hear about!

You can sign up for any of our email newsletters here.

Vacations are finally something many of us are looking forward to, and the library has a collection of travel guides in our Non-fiction section (Dewey numbers 914-919) to help you decide where to go and what to do. Not quite ready to get away? You might still have fun planning a “someday” vacation or taking a virtual tour. Check out Great Tours in our Great Courses collection (including Kanopy’s Travel Photography course).

The free Libby app from OverDrive is our source for ebooks and digital audiobooks. We belong to a consortium with libraries throughout New Jersey, but we also have a collection just for Scotch Plains cardholders, so there are plenty of titles to choose from. Audiobooks are great company when you’re doing chores, taking a walk or a drive, or working on your favorite craft project. If you’re able to take a walk with your audiobook, you can cross off two bingo squares!

Summer is a great time to try something new, so why not try reading a book you wouldn’t normally be drawn to? In the library, we shelve science fiction and mystery books in separate areas, so if you haven’t browsed there, you might have missed something really great. Genres like romance, fantasy, and horror are shelved with general fiction, but maybe you can tell them by their covers and skip over them. This might be the year you give one of them a go – feel free to ask the librarian for suggestions that would be just right for you (which would also give you another bingo square).

This should be another fun and easy square to check off. Reading a book to a child counts, and I’m sure our Youth Services department has loads of suggestions. Reading a book to your pet counts (especially this summer, and if you wanted to share a pic of your pet enjoying a book, we’d love to see it). There are also lots of recent books about animals that you can borrow from the library just to enjoy by yourself. Here are a few:

• Hero dogs: how a pack of rescues, rejects, and strays became America’s greatest disaster-search partners by Wilma Melville
• Rescue dogs: where they come from, why they act the way they do, and how to love them well by Pete Paxton
• Darling, I love you: poems from the hearts of our glorious mutts and all our animal friends by Daniel Ladinsky; illustrated by Patrick McDonnell
• The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse by Charlie Mackesy

We think we have a pretty great lineup of Tails & Tales programs this summer. Most of them will still be done via Zoom, but we’re trying to move some programs outside the library, as safely as possible. Did you attend the Cat Men of Gotham program in June or make mocktails with us in July? You could explore the night sky in August with us virtually or in-person. You can see the full list of our programs on our events page. Whether it’s online or in person, we look forward to seeing you this summer.

This is a fun and easy square to check off. You can prep by watching the Great Course on birding or skip over to our YouTube channel for the recording of our Great Backyard Bird Count program from February. You can download any of a number of bird identification apps, or you can just simply spend some time watching and listening to the birds in your yard or at a local park or playground. How many different kinds do you notice? (Rhetorical question – we aren’t keeping track – we just want to you to enjoy the experience in the spirit of our summer reading theme, Tails & Tales)