With the departure of many summer people, it’s a great time for readers, as the bookshelves for new titles are no longer being emptied almost as soon as they are filled. It’s also a great time for children with new programs being offered.

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New Saturday activities for kids

Below are some special fall Saturday programs for all children in Pre-K through Grade 5 and their adult minders.

Oct. 17 from 10 to 11 a.m. Half the fun of Halloween each year is getting ready for the event. A program of stories, crafts and games.

Nov. 7, from 10 to 11 a.m. Get in the mood for winter with some old-fashioned games and toys while exploring tales from our collection of children’s classics and historical fiction. Books such as those by Laura Ingalls Wilder offer great ideas for passing chill November hours.

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Reading Adventure and homework help

The LPPL Reading Adventure and Homework Program for children grades 3 to 5, which was a great success when it was introduced last year, is getting underway again on Wednesdays.

Plenty of assistance will be available to help kids with homework assignments or to find a book or two from their 46er reading lists.

Students will be able to ride the early CAT bus or the later bus after school activities to the library after school (they will need a note each Wednesday), or they may be dropped off. They should be picked up from the library between 4 and 4:30 p.m.

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Kids building from books

Three Friday after-school programs to complement the Wednesday sessions have been added for October.

Children’s Room overseer Karen Armstrong has begun piling up cardboard and materials of all sorts for special Friday sessions to be offered Oct. 2, 9 and 16. Kids will learn about different types of designs from all kinds of books ranging from the works of Frank Geary, the world of Legos and works of architecture in children’s fiction. After discussing and making their preferences known, they will tackle their own versions with opportunities to explain how and why they are designing their buildings and structures.

The drop-off drill is the same as for Wednesdays with students again needing permission notes. Anyone wishing more information may contact Library Director Bambi Pedu or Karen Armstrong at the library at 518-523-3200 or by email at librarian@lakeplacidlibrary.org.

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Therese’s garden

With the library expansion program completed in the late 1990s, a new garden area was built behind the main building. It was lovely, but the past few winters exacted a toll, crumbling the hand-built stone retaining wall and destroying some of the bushes, which had outgrown their environment.

Using special funds donated and dedicated to the memory of our late library director Therese Patnode, who died in 2011, professional help was brought in this summer to rebuild the foundation and curved retaining wall of the raised bed. A whole new garden has been created with new plantings, one which the LPPL board of trustees and library staff think would please Therese.

No date has been set for a dedication and unveiling of a bronze plaque, but it is expected to be sometime this fall.

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Canoeing in the gallery

Lyn DuMoulin is an artist with a deeply rooted attachment for the Adirondacks. She conveys her feelings for the lakes and rivers of our area through the clarity of vibrant watercolors and light filling her paintings now on exhibit in the library’s Guy Brewster Hughes Gallery.

Although the greater part of her adult life has been in Vermont, her summers have been spent almost entirely in the Tupper Lake area where her grandfather lived. The rivers and lakes of the deep Adirondacks and what she describes as “the black waters of the great north country” are often populated with canoes and paddlers.

Her works have hung in juried shows throughout Vermont and at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts. The display is open during normal library hours and will remain until the end of October.

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Our calendar

Check our calendar by going to our website, www.lakeplacidlibrary.org and clicking OnLine Resources. There you will find the dates and subjects of upcoming computer classes and the Lake Placid Institute Book Club as well as art exhibitions and other activities.

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Sample list of new titles

Adult Fiction: “Friction” by Sandra Brown; “Badlands” by C.J. Box; “Black-eyed Susans” by Julia Heaberlin; “Brush Back” by Sara Paretsky; “The Cartel” by Don Winslow; “Did You Ever Have A Family” by Bill Clegg; “Dinner With Buddha” by Roland Merullo; “Dry Bones” by Craig Johnson; “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” by David Lagercrantz; “In the Dark Places: an Inspector Banks Novel” by Peter Robinson; “Game of Mirrors” by Andrea Camillieri; “Make Me by Lee Child: The Marriage of Opposites” by Alice Hoffman; “NYPD Red 2” by James Patterson; “Orphan #8” by Kim van Alkemade; “The Paris Vendetta” by Steve Berry; “Silver Linings: A Rose Harbor Novel” by Debbie Macomber; “The Solomon Curse” by Clive Cussler; “Starlight on Willow Lake” by Susan Wiggs; “Trap” by Robert Tanenbaum; “Undercover” by Danielle Steel; “Unlucky 13” by James Patterson; “A Window Opens” by Elisabeth Egan; and “Purity” by Jonathan Franzan

Adult Non-Fiction: “The Bee, A Natural History”; “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banalty of Evil” by Hannah Arendt; “Let’s Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties” by Patricia Marx; “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought” by David Adam; “The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey” by Rinker Buck; and “They Called Her Reckless: A True Story of War, Love and One Extraordinary Horse” by Janet Barrett

DVDs-Adult: “5 Flights Up: The Second Marigold Hotel”; “No Reservations”; and “The Sleeping Dictionary”

DVDs-Juvenile: “All About Fun on Wheels”; “Beauty and the Beast”; “Heidi”; “Harry Potter” movies one through six; “Percy Jackson’s Sea of Monsters”; and “The Secret Garden”