Search Stories

Scheduled:
Scheduled:

Teen Bookish Battle

Teens, join us tomorrow for a Teen Bookish Battle!

Do you have a ton of bookish trivia rattling around in your brain? Test your knowledge in our Teen Bookish Battle and win great prizes! Grab your friends and join us for an afternoon of books, trivia, and light refreshments, all planned by our Young Adult Literary Council.

Teen Bookish Battle
Sunday, November 19, 1-2:30 p.m.
Lenexa City Center Library

Scheduled:

Save Money with Your Library Card

Rising prices make finding ways to stretch our money a priority—especially as the holidays approach! Whether you’re planning for an important purchase, wanting to try something new or just looking for ways to cut costs, pull out a Johnson County Library card instead of a credit card and make the Library your first stop. 

  • The average new book is over $16. So, if you read just one book per month, checking them out at the library instead will save you nearly $200 a year. In 2022, the Library saved JoCo readers over $51 million in checkouts alone! You can also find great deals on gently used books at the Friends of Johnson County Library’s weekend book sales.   
  • Download the Libby app and cut out your $15 monthly audiobook subscription cost. That’s $180 per year saved on top of access to unlimited titles anywhere, anytime.  
  • Like to read the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, or maybe just the local news? Skip the $100+ annual subscription fees and access all without a paywall through our eLibrary. Print editions of popular newspapers and magazines are available to read at our 14 Library locations.   
  • We offer thousands of DVDs to browse and check out, from new releases to classic film and television favorites. If streaming is more your style, cut out those monthly subscription fees with our free streaming platforms like Kanopy.  
  • Just in time for holiday gift-shopping or Black Friday deals, get the best bang for your buck with Consumer Reports. Normally a $59 annual subscription, visit a branch or log-in online for free access to more than 9,000 unbiased product reviews plus recommendations on services like banking, insurance and travel.  
  • The Library is also one of the last places you can spend time with no expectation to buy anything. Spend an afternoon out of the house at a curated art exhibit, entertain grandkids when it’s too cold to play outside, or attend free programs and workshops on topics like financial planning, genealogy, community engagement, and arts and culture.

Visit any of our 14 branches, call us at 913-826-4600 or check out our website to explore how the Library can help you save money and improve your quality of life. 

Scheduled:
Black and white photo of a two story Bonita train depot

Bonita train depot in the early 1900s.

No Longer on the Map

Time travel through Johnson County's history on this beautiful throwback Thursday. Did you know JoCoHistory.org is the best place to explore historical photographs and documents about the people, places and organizations of Johnson County, Kansas, from the 19th century to the present? JoCoHistory is a collaborative presentation of the history from the Johnson County Museum, Johnson County Library and many JoCoHistory partners.

If you want to unearth “the lost communities of Johnson County,” there’s simply no better place than JoCoHistory.

Scheduled:

No Wait Wednesday:

Hello and welcome to this week's edition of #NoWaitWednesday, where we look at a title on the New Release shelf at one of our Library branches that's just waiting for a lucky patron to check it out - all without worrying about a lengthy waiting list. 

Others Were Emeralds is the debut adult coming-of-age novel by internationally acclaimed writer and poet Lang Leav. A stunning novel about guilt, friendship, and loss, this story will move readers who love insightful and lush writing from authors like Etaf Rum or Ocean Vuong. The story begins in the 1990s with Ai, the daughter of Cambodian refugees who fled their war-torn country and settled in small-town Australia to rebuild their shattered lives. Her friend group is a small but a tight-knit one, likewise populated by second-generation Asian immigrants who are trying to find their own way in a place far different from where their parents were from - which is difficult all its own, but made even more so by the arrival of adolescence and the difficulties of navigating secondary school.

The novel is primarily character-driven with the author focusing on the multilayered, invisible, and sometimes painful teen relationships between Ai and the prettier and more charismatic Brigitte, the politically-minded Sying, and the shy, withdrawn Tin, among others. A series of misunderstandings drives the friends further apart and those friendship are eventually shattered when an encounter with some local racist teen boys inflamed by the anti-Asian prejudice that swept Australia goes horribly wrong. Afterward, Ai graduates and goes off to Sydney for college, still haunted by the memories of her hometown, however a breakdown during her second year causes her to come back and confront her past and reconnect with those she thought she left behind, and she realizes that both time and distance have altered everyone's points of view.

Leav's poetry background shines, as the words and phrases she artfully selects cut to the core of each of the characters - she can present an array of emotions by just a few words or a gesture from one of her cast. Coming in at just under 300 pages, this novel is ideal for a reader who likes the thought of a meaty read but might be scared away by the length (and heft) of similarly themed novels. Leav skillfully cuts all traces of fat, leaving an impeccably tailored, insightful novel that bridges the gap between Teen and Adult audiences. 

Place your holds! Thanks, as always, for reading, and we'll see you next week. 

Scheduled:
Scheduled:

This Week at the Library

This week at the Library, you can join us at:

Poetry Walk at Strang Park – Daily, Nov. 1 - Nov. 30, All Day 

Meander through Strang Park while you enjoy poetry by Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas, on the theme of Memory Palace. Poetry boards with accompanying artwork by Kelly Yarbrough will be placed throughout the park. 

Read Under the Stars – Wednesday, Nov. 15, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Elementary aged kids and their families, please join us at the Monticello Library for a low-sensory personal reading experience. We invite you to bring your own book (or borrow one of ours!), curl up and read in our quiet starlit Library space.

Teen Bookish Battle – Sunday, Nov. 19, 1 – 2:30 p.m.

Do you have a ton of bookish trivia rattling around in your brain? Test your knowledge in our Teen Bookish Battle and win great prizes! Grab your friends and join us at the Lenexa City Center Library  for an afternoon of books, trivia, and light refreshments, all planned by our Young Adult Literary Council.

And there’s much more happening this week … 

Already have a busy week?  Remember, you can watch recordings of many of our programs at your convenience with Library OnDemand

Scheduled:
Scheduled:

Read Under the Stars

Elementary aged kids and their families, please join us for a low-sensory personal reading experience. We invite you to bring your own book (or borrow one of ours!), curl up and read in our quiet starlit Library space. No registration necessary.

Wednesday, Nov. 15, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Monticello Library

Thursday, Nov. 16, 4-6 p.m.
Central Resource Library

Scheduled:
Bend Sunds (in orange shirt) on a UN mission trip to Mali with a Chinese Army unit.

Bend Sunds (in orange shirt) on a UN mission trip to Mali with a Chinese Army unit.

Army Veteran's Career of Service Continues at Johnson County Library

Over the last few years, Johnson County Library has closed (and then reopened) during a global pandemic, then faced a cascade of subsequent challenges — from locating personal protective equipment (PPE) to navigating supply chain issues. Throughout this time, the Library has been able to call on the skills of Ben Sunds, the Library’s associate director for customer experience since 2018, whose previous military experience provided the training needed to help navigate these tricky situations.

Before joining the Library, Sunds had a previous 32-year career with the U.S. Army, mostly in special operations. That included command of a battalion at Fort Bliss, Texas from 2013 to 2015. During that time, Fort Bliss was the base where soldiers who had helped contain a deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa quarantined on their return to the U.S. 

“No one got sick,” Sunds says, recalling that successful quarantine operation.   

“We all had to go through the PPE training. I thought that was a very military term. Now it’s in people’s common vernacular,” he said. “We all had to learn all the protocols.” 

He never imagined he would experience the fallout from another epidemic as has happened in recent years with the COVID-19 epidemic. 

“But I’m very thankful for the training experience,” he says now. “It breeds a lot of resilience and perspective.”   

Sunds had a fascinating and fulfilling Army career that took him to 26 different countries. He did combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq but most of his work involved civilian/military cooperation, forging good relations with diverse cultures, including remote villages in Pakistan. One United Nations mission involved helping Tajikistan, in Central Asia, to make sure it maintained a stable government. 

“I liked the adventure part of stumbling into something and not being able to communicate. I find that part exhilarating, not frightening,” he said.  

He and his wife Shannon always knew they would wind up back in the Midwest; he grew up in Iowa and she grew up in Nebraska and they met at Northwest Missouri State in Maryville. He finished his Army career as deputy director for the special operations education department at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. 

The family, including daughter Jessica and son Garrett, settled in Shawnee. When Sunds retired from the military in January 2018, he still craved a public service-oriented job and landed in his new position at Johnson County Library in May 2018. He has discovered that, like with military special operations, Johnson County Library is full of “very highly educated people but very united in a common cause.”  He enjoys supervising the staffs that handle internal and external communications, in-house support training, and information technology. He appreciates these employees’ skills and strengths and how everyone has risen to the occasion during the recent COVID-19 pandemic.  

One of the first things that attracted Sunds to Johnson County Library was the fact that the organization had a strategic plan, and he was impressed with its specific mission and vision. That was familiar to him, coming from a military background, and he’s found this job to be a great fit. He was looking for a culture that embodied community engagement, service and lifelong learning and caring.

“And I think I found all that,” he says, “in the Library.”

More than 26,000 veterans reside in Johnson County, and 200 Johnson County Government employees working in 19 departments have self-reported their veteran status. In honor of Veterans Day, the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners issued a proclamation to recognize all veterans, military members on active duty and reservists in the Armed Forces. The County will observe Veterans Day today at 11 a.m., at the Lenexa National Guard Armory, 18200 West 87th Street Pkwy., located just west of Renner Road.

The event recognizes veterans from all Armed Forces for their military service. It’s open for the public to attend and will also be livestreamed on Johnson County’s Facebook page and online at jocogov.org/JoCoHonorsVets. Johnson County employees who have served in the Armed Forces are part of a veterans slide show featured on that page.

You can also find Library materials related to Veterans Day with one of these lists: