A New Chapter for the Children’s Reading Room
After a season of quiet renovations, the children's wing reopens with refinished oak shelving, a story-time alcove and three thousand newly catalogued titles.
The first thing you notice is the light. With the south-facing windows clear of the temporary bookcases that had crowded them for years, the children's wing now opens to the garden in a way it has not since the building was completed in 1974.
For nearly four decades, this room has been the quiet engine of the library. Generations of Niagara-on-the-Lake readers have taken their first steps into chapter books here, joined their first book club here, and on occasion fallen asleep on the carpet here. When the board approved a modest restoration in the fall, the brief was straightforward: preserve what works, replace what doesn't, and bring the light back in.
Six months later, the result is something between a careful repair and a quiet reinvention.
What Changed
The most visible work was structural. The original oak shelving, hand-built by a local cabinetmaker in the mid-seventies, has been stripped, refinished and reinstalled along the north and east walls. Three thousand titles were temporarily relocated, recatalogued where needed, and returned to shelves organized by reading level rather than by author.
- A dedicated story-time alcove with tiered seating for up to twenty children
- A new early-reader collection of three thousand titles, refreshed for the first time since 2018
- Two assistive-reading stations with adjustable seating and screen magnification
- A relocated craft cart with materials donated by the Friends of the Library
- Restored south-facing windows with UV-filtering film to protect the collection
The room is doing more than it did before, in less space. That feels right for a library.
— Tom McGuane | Author, Ninety-Two in the Shade
A different kind of quiet
If you visited the wing in the years before the renovation, you may remember it as a slightly overstuffed room: deeply loved, well used, but creaking under the weight of its own programming. Story-time competed with homework help; the craft table lived under the picture-book shelves; the puppet theatre, fondly remembered, took up a full corner without being used as often as one might hope.
The reorganization is, in part, an admission that we needed to make choices. Some things did not return. The puppet theatre has been donated to a partner branch where it gets daily use. In its place is something quieter and more flexible: a low platform with cushions, suitable for a class visit or a single child with a stack of picture books.
A walk-through
The video below was filmed on the morning the wing reopened, before any of the new programs had begun. It is a short walk from the entrance to the story-time alcove.
In pictures
A handful of moments from the first week of programs in the renovated space.
Behold! A library!
Also a library.
This is a library.
Questions, answered
A handful of questions came up often during the work. The answers below should cover most of what families have been asking at the front desk.
What's next
Programming for the summer is already booked. Tuesday story-times resume on the seventh, the early-reader club starts later in June, and a small exhibition of children's book illustration from the local history collection will open in the alcove in July.
If you have not been by in a few months, the library would love to see you. Come for the books, stay for the light.