Greenopoly: it's the PLAY in Work. Learn. Play.

August 1 marks the end of our summer reading clubs, including Greenopoly, the 3rd floor game featuring Des Plaines parks and cultural institutions, like the History Center, the Self-Help Closet and Food Pantry and the Frisbee Center. Over 700 answers were submitted by our loyal patrons so far, and we've given out several gift cards to the winners, including cards to Pesches', Lurveys' and Joe Caputo's. ( Flowers and produce - it's all green, man!)

So, if Greenopoly was the summer book club, where were the books? Well ... everywhere. You can't imagine how many times patrons have told us that they didn't realize we had something in the collection, like, "I didn't know you had magazines", or "I didn't know you had books in Polish"or "I didn't know you had such a clever and imaginative Readers' Services staff". (Actually, the only time I hear that last statement is when I talk to myself, but theoretically a patron could say it someday.) Greenopoly was our attempt to entice patrons to walk around the 3rd floor and behold the abundance and diversity of our collection not to mention the abundance and diversity of parks in Des Plaines! The library's logo says "Work. Learn. Play." We at the Readers' Services desk are obviously partial to "Play", and we found hundreds of patrons who agree.

If you liked the game, kindly let us know. If you think we should try something else next summer, we'd like to hear that too. And as always, we offer our hearty thanks to The Friends of the Library who so graciously support the summer reading clubs and who paid for all the gift cards.