The PPL “Box Truck”, with its no-frills appearance and utilitarian design, may not be equipped with the latest technology but its cargo section is loaded with precious materials that connect curious minds to the things they love: Literature, poetry, mythology, music, movies, and much more are transported to seniors residing at assisted living facilities. This fabulous PPL pop-up service is managed by Casey Grant, Outreach & Technology Librarian.
To learn more about Casey’s work, check out this Q&A:
What is a Library Pop-Up, also referred to as Library Outreach?
This service ensures that people who don’t have the ability to physically come to the library are still able to access library resources. Our former outreach coordinator created the foundation for our outreach efforts but due to the pandemic, the program was suspended. I slowly reintroduced the program in 2020 following her successful model. Currently, we serve a dozen assisted living communities in the Greater Portland area.
Each community served is unique. How do you choose what resources to bring to each location?
Each location usually has a population with a strong preference for certain types of materials. Based on overall requests, I try to curate a variety of materials that best match common asks. For example, at one particular location, I know to pack more mysteries, historical fiction, and science fiction because the residents at that particular site enjoy those genres. Residents can also place requests with me for specific items or preferred formats such as large print or audiobooks, that I will bring to them on my next visit. I keep a lot of lists!
I’m also able to tell which materials to bring based on which bin is the emptiest when I pack up to leave. When I come back to the library with a very light non-fiction bin, I know that the residents at that location really like their non-fiction!
What is most rewarding about this role?
The residents are so grateful and appreciative of this service. The conversations I have with the people I connect with are so gratifying and I love hearing how this library service impacts their lives. To be part of this experience is amazing. Several residents have told me that the Pop-up Library is the highlight of their month, which makes my work so fulfilling.
What is the most challenging part of the work?
This service requires a significant amount of time and effort to ensure that each location is getting the attention it deserves. Each place is unique and meeting those needs while maintaining consistency is a constant balancing act. Luckily, after over two years of managing this service, I’m starting to find a rhythm!
What advice would you give someone creating an outreach program at their own library?
A successful library pop-up requires a significant commitment. My advice would be to build the program slowly and gradually implement new services and sites based on what is working and what isn’t. Good communication is so critical! So much of my work is listening to patron feedback to guide the level of service the Library can offer.
At this time PPL’s Pop-Up service is at full capacity and we are unable to add additional locations to the schedule.
Thank you, Casey, for all the thoughtful effort you put into this greatly appreciated service!
If you happen to spot the PPL Box Truck, please be sure to give Casey a wave to thank him for this good work. If you’d like to give a gift to support this vital service, you can donate here.
The PPL Bookmobile might be Portland’s biggest celebrity on wheels! If you have ever attended Portland’s Pride parade you have witnessed the celebratory reaction from adoring fans as it slowly rolled along the parade route. Decorated with adorable critters and outfitted with the latest technology, the Bookmobile brings joy and accessibility to every community it serves.
In honor of the Bookmobile’s 10th anniversary, we chatted with Bookmobile Team Leader Steve Weigle who was there on March 15, 2013 when the Bookmobile was delivered after a four-day cross-country trip from Las Vegas, where it was assembled:
What are some of the best things you’ve heard Bookmobile visitors say?
This is gonna be a great week because of the books and movies I was able to get on the Bookmobile today.
The Bookmobile is the best thing since Harry Potter and guinea pigs!
I love to read. Why watch TV when you can read a good book? (This one made Steve’s heart swell!)
I want to live on the Bookmobile and wake up to have breakfast surrounded by books!
A patron stopped at the Bookmobile and said it reminded her of the Bookmobile of her youth where she remembers coming off the Bookmobile with an armful of books. This patron also mentioned her younger sister is the author of the Judy Moody books. She was going to make it a point to share with her sister that Portland has a Bookmobile!
How often do you update the collection? How do you decide what titles to stock?
We update the collection daily. Items go out at every stop so we’re constantly adding different things. We pay attention to what our patron base enjoys reading which allows us the opportunity to stock the Bookmobile with items that folks want on board. We also take requests at each of our stops which we bring with us the following week.
What is the most challenging part of your work?
Making sure we have everything we need to keep the Bookmobile ready to go every day. Having an extra pool of substitute drivers for the Bookmobile is always a challenge as we currently do not have that.
What are the top 3 skill sets needed to be in charge of operating the Bookmobile?
You definitely need to be comfortable interacting with the public. I’m very outgoing so it comes naturally to me! Good organizational skills and a well-rounded knowledge of books in general. Pay attention to the needs of your patrons so you can develop a viable collection on the Bookmobile. And always be a good listener as this is probably the most important skill of all.
What is the future of “mobile libraries”?
Hopefully “mobile libraries” will be around for a very long time as there is a true need for them especially in rural areas where people do not have access to a brick-and-mortar library. Even here in Portland, there is a need as has been shown by our increasing circulation and the dedicated following of our patrons over the past ten years.
Do you have a Bookmobile wishlist?
We would like to completely update our current computer system with a laptop which would give us much more working space at our tabletop on board.
If you spot the Bookmobile, please be sure to give Steve and the Bookmobile Team a wave to thank them for this good work! If you’d like to give a gift to support this vital service, you can donate here.
Fun Facts:
The Bookmobile currently has 37,280 miles on the odometer
The Bookmobile is a customized Mercedes-Benz chassis equipped with Wi-Fi
Bookmobile staff can issue new library cards right on board!
The Bookmobile is 24 feet long and can carry about 1,500 books
Rooftop solar panels help power the vehicle’s electrical systems, and its clean-burning diesel engine gets an average of 22 mpg.
The Bookmobile is wheelchair-accessible and has room inside for three or four people to browse titles
Cityside Auto Repair services the Bookmobile every year for the annual inspection and basic maintenance
The Bookmobile takes 14 quarts of synthetic oil
Check our current schedule to see where the Bookmobile will be next!
Spring at our Riverton Branch! A staff photo from Lisa of gardening books, daffodils, and Rachel Gloria Adams’ beautiful mural of colorful flowers.
Is it…spring? It’s spring! Time for April showers to bring all the flowers, and time for our staff to share the bright, intriguing books we’ve enjoyed (or are hoping to read soon). Read on for adventures in Europe, compelling memoirs, great gardening books, cozy mysteries, heartbreaking and heartwarming new novels and of course, poetry picks for National Poetry Month. (Bonus: did you know about the City of Portland’s incredible tree map?) Read on!
Cindy’s Pick
Here are two new books from the children’s library that I’m very interested in.
In Erin Bow’s Simon Sort of Says, 12-year-old Simon O’Keefe comes across as a class clown, telling silly stories about how his family was driven out of Omaha by alpacas and how his mom occasionally has to wrangle emus. But the story he never tells is one he wishes he could forget: he was the only survivor of a school shooting. He and his family have moved to the National Quiet Zone, where the internet is banned so radio astronomers can listen for signs of life in space. Now Simon has a chance to not have his terrible past follow him. He meets a kid who wants to help the astronomers find what they are looking for and Simon wants to help too! This is a story about finding new friends, healing from trauma and speaking your truth.
In Ami Polonsky’s World Made of Glass, set in 1987, Iris is trying desperately to act normal and be a regular kid, but nothing feels right when her father is dying of a virus that’s off-limits to talk about. Her dad has AIDS and she resolves to speak out against the fear, misinformation, and prejudice surrounding the virus while getting to know her father better than she has before and discovering more about herself in the process.
Carly’s Picks
If you’re reading this, it may finally feel like spring! But if the weather has other plans, then Dan Santat’s new graphic memoir is a great way to celebrate new beginnings. In A First Time for Everything, thirteen-year-old Dan travels to Europe in the summer of 1989. His expectations are low for the trip—he kept to himself in middle school to avoid bullying, and he plans to do the same abroad. But keeping to himself is impossible on a trip where he climbs to the top of the Eiffel Tower, stays with a host family, and sneaks into a Wimbledon match! Through his adventures, he makes new friends—and learns that new experiences might be worth the risk.
For my next recommendation, let’s travel further back in time to 1910. In Krystal Marquis’ debut, The Davenports, we follow the Davenport children and their friends in the search for love. But as Black family of wealth and status, the Davenports must also confront racism and navigate gender and class expectations alongside romance. This is a great choice for fans of historical fiction or romance!
Finally, celebrate poetry month by taking a look at the Teen Library’s poetry list for a selection of poems by and for teens. And don’t forget about the verse novel! Some of my recent favorites are Baby Teethand Blood Moon.
Vicky’s Picks
For me, one of the more rewarding of the library’s ongoing programs is our partnership with the immigrant-services agency Hope Acts to provide assistance to asylum seekers as they fill out the necessary (and voluminous) paperwork to remain in the United States. It’s had me thinking about some excellent books for a range of audiences that touch on the refugee experience, written by a pair of siblings who themselves became refugees as children when their mother converted to Christianity, a crime in post-Revolutionary Iran.
Dina Nayeri’s memoir The Ungrateful Refugee records the family’s odyssey with raw, unfiltered emotion, describing her mother’s conversion and their subsequent flight, highlighting the often grindingly humiliating experience of being dependent on others for their survival. Her most recent memoir, Who Gets Believed, is a more expansive interrogation of the nature of belief and skepticism, but threading through it is the conundrum faced by refugees who must prove to a disbelieving state that they deserve welcome.
In Everything Sad Is Untrue, Dina Nayeri’s younger brother, Daniel, also recounts the family’s flight from Iran, but with a fictional overlay. Written for middle-grade and teen readers, it won the 2021 Printz Award but boasts both a literary style and complexity of narrative structure that will amply reward adult readers as well. He ranges back and forth in time, exploring in turn topics such as Persian customs of hospitality and the terror of American toilets.
For still younger readers, Dina Nayeri offers the photoessay The Waiting Place, which introduces children to kids in a refugee camp. Some have recently arrived; some have been there for years. They play, bicker, and dream about the home they left behind and the one they hope they’ll find. Photographer Anna Bosch Miralpeix captures these youngsters with sympathy but not sentimentalism. It’s an unsettling portrait that underscores the impermanence too many kids endure.
Readers who’ve made similar journeys will find much to recognize in these books; those who haven’t may understand their new friends and neighbors a bit better.
Elizabeth’s Picks
The green of growing things calms me. —Camille Dungy
Kelly Link! Her tales are wild and weird and hauntingly close to home. Maybe you yourself could wind up in one. If you loved the titular story in Magic for Beginners, check out Link’s new collection White Cat, Black Dog. For a nonfiction spin on fairy tales I’m looking forward to Sabrina Orah Mark’s memoir-in-essays, Happily: A Personal History—with Fairy Tales. It has a cover I love and praise from Kiese Laymon: “Magic does live here.”
A friend in Belfast recommends Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa (translated by Alison Watts) as a heartfelt novel for spring. Like Soil, it’s also a good pick for 2023 Reading Challenge #7: A book with flowers or trees on the cover.
And, as I am now a full-on convert to genre coziness—cozy fantasy, cozy romance, cozy mystery—I can’t wait to pick up Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. Which sounds grim. But cozy? I’ll just have to read it.
Becca’s Picks
Getting dressed for the day, I find mold
in an old coffee cup. What I mean to say is this:
Honesty is uncomfortable and funny. —Morgan Parker
The first piece by Morgan Parker I read was the essay “Self-help” in the anthology Sex and the Single Woman. (This is a great anthology, by the way.) Morgan extracts and dissects the feelings of dichotomy and dysmorphia that present while moving through life as a perpetually single woman. The essay is honest, in that it is both uncomfortable and funny, as she deftly captures the tension between satisfaction with one’s life and the pining for romantic connection. I left this piece with a desire to read more of her work.
Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night, Parker’s first collection of poetry, is thick with melodrama. Consider some of the titles: “Greetings from Struggle City,” “On Children, How I Hate Them and Want to Corrupt Them, How You Know I Hate Them, and What That Could Mean,” and “I’d Rather Sink…Than Call Brad for Help!” There are poems imagining scenarios with celebrities and poems imagining the inner lives of Real Housewives. There are also intimate scenes capturing the minutiae of city life and vulnerable portraits of loneliness in other people’s company. This collection is like the person who lightens the tension at a funeral by telling a morbid joke. If you’re a fan of Billy Collins or Ross Gay but are longing for a sharper edge, then I can’t wait to place this book into your hands.
Elise’s Picks
Have you ever wanted to be a person who can tell the difference between an ash tree and a maple tree? Or are you just wondering what kind of tree is growing in front of your home? Either way, the library has some great books that can help! I recommend starting with A Beginner’s Guide to Recognizing Trees of the Northeast by Mark Mikolas. This book will introduce you to the most common trees growing in Maine and give you many tips on easy ways to recognize them.
Early spring, before the trees have fully “leafed out” is also a great time to appreciate the tree’s bark. Michael Wojtech’s Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast categorizes trees into different groups based on bark structure and has loads of pictures of trees at different ages. It’s remarkable how their bark can change with time, just like our skin. There are also some keys for identifying trees by their bark.
Maine’s Forest Service has a publication worth checking out for anyone interested in learning to identify trees. Forest Trees of Maine has two in depth keys (one for summer and one for winter) and photos of each tree’s buds, leaves and bark. There’s also a detailed glossary explaining all the tree terms, and illustrations for when you are trying to find a “leaf scar” or deciding if your conifers needles are “scale shaped” or “awl shaped.”
Bonus: If you are stumped on a local tree, you can check the city of Portland’s Tree Map!
Stephanie’s Pick
Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins—what a good read, suggested by a patron! The fabulous writing is almost over the top, but always compelling. This novel is a family saga featuring fights, food, and love set in the very thirsty Owens Valley of central California. WWII and the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans at Manzanar highlight more powerful characters, but the enduring battle, which probably still rages, is over water rights. LA water men are evil incarnate for Rocky Rhodes, the patriarch. This is a busy book which captivates until the end. I was confused by the ending, but the Acknowledgement by Wiggins’ daughter Lara Porzak reveals important details. Be sure to read that and read this book anyway.
Janice’s Picks
British historian Tom Crewe’s first novel The New Life follows early sexologist Henry Havelock Ellis, his wife Edith (a lesbian and prominent feminist activist), John Addington Symonds (writer and gay rights reformer) and his wife Catherine. Other historical figures appear in the late-19th century London setting, including gay rights activist Edward Carpenter and Irish writer Oscar Wilde. Readers who know some of this history—which is not necessary to enjoy the book—might delight in seeing Crewe’s treatment of it. Crewe’s portrait of book banning, cultural intolerance of sexual and gender non-conformity, and the pleasures and challenges of living outside of social conventions could not be more relevant to our current moment.
InWe All Want Impossible Things: A Novel, Massachusetts author Catherine Newman has managed to tell a story about death that is unsentimentally heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny. Ashley, the narrator, is caring for her lifelong friend Edith, who is dying of ovarian cancer in hospice care while surrounded by an eclectic crew of wise and wisecracking family and friends. This is a novel about living and dying, but more importantly about living while dying—which as one of the characters points out is basically what we’re all doing all the time anyway. It features a fair amount of entangled grief, sex, partying, and music. I loved this unflinching book about love and loss, but wasn’t sure how it might land for others. With some trepidation I recommended it to a close friend who currently has a loved one in hospice, and she promptly texted that it was “the perfect book at the perfect time.”
Emily’s Picks
A new book by a favorite author is always a reason to celebrate, and KJ Charles’s The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen is certainly worth cheering for! Charles is among my all-time favorites, and has written numerous queer historical romances that never fail to delight.
Our story is set in the Romney Marsh in 1810. The marsh is full of smugglers and fascinating wildlife—at least that’s what Gareth finds himself captivated by when he inherits his estranged father’s house. A nighttime stroll leads him to discover a clandestine smuggling operation—and that Joss, the unforgettable man he fell for (and then out with) in a London molly house, is the head of the Doomsday smuggling clan. Secrets abound, menacing men threaten Gareth and his newfound family for information he doesn’t have, and Gareth and Joss find themselves spending more time together on the marsh—pursuing beetles and newts, discovering secret plots, and falling for each other all over again.
I adored reading this book for so many reasons (the romance! The mystery! The characters!) but the setting is one I won’t soon forget. I loved seeing the marsh through both Gareth’s eyes as a budding naturalist thrilled to spot each plant and creature, and through Joss’s eyes as the smuggler who knows all the best ways to traverse it in the middle of the night when searching for his kidnapped lover. It’s great fun to read and will have you giving the beetles and slowly awakening plants a closer look this spring.
For more excellent queer historical romances with a generous heap of mystery, try Charles’s Will Darling series, starting with Slippery Creatures. For another queer historical with more mystery and the potential for romance in future books, don’t hesitate to read Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen.
Looking for help with more reading ideas? That is our very favorite thing! Try a book from one of our Staff Picks lists or our Your Next Great Read! service to get your own personal list of reading recommendations. You can also reach out to us at readersadvisory@portlib.org.
