Blackwell Public Library

09/04/2026

Awesome! That's our Bobby!

🌟 EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: BOBBY JULIAN — BLACKWELL PUBLIC LIBRARY 🌟

This week, the City of Blackwell Employee Spotlight is shining on Bobby Julian, custodian at the Blackwell Public Library!

For eight years, Bobby has worked diligently behind the scenes to keep the Library clean, welcoming and ready for everyone who walks through its doors.

“I love my job,” Bobby said. “I love being able to help make our Library a clean and friendly place for everyone that comes in.”

For Bobby, his work is also a matter of community pride.

“The Library is a place that I try and make our community proud of,” he said.

Originally from the Tulsa area, Bobby has come to appreciate, and even prefer, the slower pace of life in Blackwell.

When he isn’t keeping the Library looking its best, Bobby enjoys spending time with his family, working with his ham radio and gardening.

And if he could travel anywhere?

“Anywhere in the USA is fine by me,” Bobby said.

Bobby’s work helps make the Blackwell Public Library a welcoming place for our entire community every single day.

Thank you for eight years of hard work and dedication to the City of Blackwell, Bobby!

09/04/2026

✨ LEGO CLUB IS BACK at Blackwell Library! ✨

Join us Fridays at 4 PM for LEGO Club!

Come hang out, build, play, and let your creativity take over! Most weeks will be open building, with some fun LEGO challenges and special projects mixed in along the way.

We provide the LEGOs—you bring the imagination!

09/04/2026

THE BOOK SALE IS BACK
Items include CHILDREN'S CHAPTER BOOKS, Children's Novels, Children's Nonfiction Books, and a few Graphic Novels (geared for Adults)

$1 PER BAG - DOWNSTAIRS at the Blackwell Public Library
During REGULAR BUSINESS HOURS
10 am - 6 pm Monday through Thursday
10 am - 5 pm Friday
9 am - Noon Saturday

09/03/2026

September is Hispanic Heritage Month at the Blackwell Public Library! 📚

We’re celebrating with new displays for both Middle Grade/Young Adult and Adult readers, featuring stories from Hispanic authors and voices, along with books exploring Hispanic history, communities and culture.

Here are just a few of the titles you’ll find on display:

🏠 The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros — One of the most celebrated coming-of-age novels in American literature, Cisneros’ poignant story follows 12-year-old Esperanza Cordero as she grows up in Chicago. Through a series of unforgettable vignettes, the novel explores identity, family, poverty, racism, s*xuality and the complicated journey toward adulthood.

🏜️ Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue — Enrigue reimagines the mythology of the American West in this revisionist Western spanning the borderlands of Mexico and the United States. Following characters caught amid violence, displacement and conflict, the novel asks readers to reconsider how the West was “won” — and at what cost.

🌹 Malas by Marcela Fuentes — Lulu Muñoz is juggling her father’s unpredictable outbursts, her love life, a punk-rock band and her upcoming quinceañera. Then there’s the decades-old curse hanging over her family. Set in the Texas border town of La Cienega, Malas weaves together generations of women in a story of family, identity, folklore and rebellion.

🕯️ Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia — After receiving a disturbing letter from her newlywed cousin, Noemí Taboada travels to an isolated mansion in the Mexican countryside. What she discovers is far stranger — and more sinister — than she imagined. Moreno-Garcia blends Gothic romance and cosmic horror into a haunting slow-burn mystery.

Stop by the Blackwell Public Library throughout September to browse the displays, discover a new author and celebrate Hispanic voices and stories with us!

09/03/2026

🍂📚 NEW SEASON. NEW BOOKMARKS. NEW REASONS TO READ. 📚🍂

Fall is creeping into the Blackwell Public Library, and that means NEW Blackwell Public Library bookmarks!

Whether your ideal autumn read involves swoons, screams, witches, vampires, pumpkin spice or unspeakable horrors lurking beneath a New England fishing village, we've got a bookmark — and a book — for you.

We've paired some of our newest fall bookmarks with books that perfectly match their vibe:

👻 FOR THE SPOOKY GIRLIES
📖 Payback's a Witch by Lana Harper
🔖 Paired with: "Hey Boo"

Witches, romance, revenge and a magical tournament. Emmy Harlow returns to the enchanted town of Thistle Grove and gets pulled into a plot to take down the local heartbreaker — only to find herself increasingly distracted by the devastatingly charming witch helping plan his downfall.

Basically: come for the witchy vengeance, stay for the sapphic yearning. 💅🔮

🧙 FOR THE WITCHY GIRLIES (AND WIZARDS, TOO)
📖 Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
🔖 Paired with: "Witch Aesthetic"

It's 1970, and a group of pregnant teenage girls have been sent away to the Wellwood House, where they're expected to surrender their babies and forget any of it ever happened.

Then a librarian gives one of them a book about witchcraft.

Suddenly, the girls have power of their own — but power always comes with a price. From the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group comes a dark tale of witchcraft, friendship and girls fighting back.

🏰 FOR THE GOTHIC YEARNERS
📖 Dracula by Bram Stoker
🔖 Paired with: "Gothic Castle"

A crumbling Transylvanian castle. A mysterious count. Letters and journals filled with mounting dread. Foggy English nights. Blood. Repressed Victorian desire.

Do we really need to sell you on this one?

It's Dracula. 🧛

☕ FOR THE FALL LOVERS
📖 The Pumpkin Spice Café by Laurie Gilmore
🔖 Paired with: "In My Fall Reading Era"

Jeanie inherits a cozy café in the small town of Dream Harbor and sees the perfect opportunity for a fresh start. Logan is the grumpy local farmer who wants absolutely nothing to do with the relentlessly cheerful newcomer.

Naturally, you can probably guess what happens next.

Small town. Grumpy x sunshine. Cozy romance. Pumpkin spice lattes.

This book basically IS fall. 🍁

🐙 FOR THE HORROR HOUNDS
📖 Shadows Over Innsmouth edited by Stephen Jones
🔖 Paired with: "Trick R Treat"

Ready for something a little darker?

Inspired by the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft, Shadows Over Innsmouth gathers terrifying tales from some of horror's biggest names — including Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Brian Lumley and Neil Gaiman.

Expect eldritch creatures, forbidden rituals, monstrous secrets and things from the depths that mankind was probably better off never discovering.

🎃 FOR THE COTTAGECORE GIRLIES
📖 The Fare Witch of Foxe Holler by Ellen Pauley Goff
🔖 Paired with: "Pumpkins"

Steel Magnolias meets Practical Magic in this cozy contemporary fantasy about Honey Frost, a kitchen witch who can heal ailments with the right recipe.

When she's summoned to cure a mysterious reclusive warlock, Honey finds herself with access to his incredible library of spellbooks, a gorgeous kitchen and the troubling realization that the warlock himself might be...kind of handsome?

Unfortunately, there's also a soul-stealing Widow Witch on the way.

You can't have everything. 🎃✨

📚 Find your fall reading personality, grab a book and pick up one of our new bookmarks during your next visit to the Blackwell Public Library!

Which one are you?

👻 Spooky Girlie
🧙 Witchy Girlie
🏰 Gothic Yearner
☕ Fall Lover
🐙 Horror Hound
🎃 Cottagecore Girlie

We're not judging if the answer is all of the above. 🍂📖

09/03/2026

SEPTEMBER EVENTS at the Blackwell Public Library!
Join us weekly for Toddler Time and LEGO CLUB!
We will also be having a Caramel Apple Bar, Sugar Scrub making, and a story time with the Blackwell P.D.!

09/03/2026

It's September which means it is FALL at the Blackwell Public Library! Don't let the triple-digit temps fool you, it is cozy and comfy in here!

09/02/2026

“This masterpiece is the novel of the decade, if not the century... The Disappearers places [James] near the front of the line, a decade or two from now, for the Nobel Prize.” –The New York Times

“Harrowing, hilarious, magnificent …this novel will be read decades from now, pored over in seminars and bookmarked on subway commutes … [James’] defiant q***r epic belongs to us all.” –The Boston Globe

“Among Marlon James’s most ambitious and history-making works… James is a singular literary talent.” –Booker Prize judge's citation

From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: the electrifying story of the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its far-reaching consequences

In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. Though strangers to one another, they share an inescapable truth: All of them are gay. And they live in a world that refuses to accept them.

One night the men are savagely beaten and one of them is killed. As their bodies heal, the survivors begin to face the hatred and contempt that the violence laid bare. Some try to ignore what happened. Others double down on retribution. Some disappear completely.

In this spellbinding novel, Marlon James has written a propulsive crime story that is also a deeply human account of connection and acceptance. Full of fascinating characters, biting humor, and unapologetic s*x, The Disappearers is both a thrilling page-turner and a finely etched portrait of q***r life.

09/02/2026

NEWLY GIFTED MIDDLE GRADE NOVEL

In her own singularly beautiful style, Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech intricately weaves together two tales, one funny, one bittersweet, to create a heartwarming, compelling, and utterly moving story of love, loss, and the complexity of human emotion.

Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle, proud of her country roots and the "Indian-ness in her blood," travels from Ohio to Idaho with her eccentric grandparents. Along the way, she tells them of the story of Phoebe Winterbottom, who received mysterious messages, who met a "potential lunatic," and whose mother disappeared.

As Sal entertains her grandparents with Phoebe's outrageous story, her own story begins to unfold—the story of a thirteen-year-old girl whose only wish is to be reunited with her missing mother.

09/02/2026

NEW YA BOOK: Daughter of Doom

Denmark, 870 AD. Yrsa knows her place in the village of Mimir’s Stool. Though she was born with a crooked foot, she’s never let anyone underestimate her; after all, she’s the daughter of T**e the helmsman and granddaughter of the fearsome warrior Gudrun the Torch (who, according to legend, stood before the walls of Paris, splattered in the blood of Frankish warriors). And no one else in the village shares her ability to see what the Norns, the three weavers who live under the roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree, and craft people’s fates, have in store for them.

One day the men return from a raid with a high-ranking hostage, Sister Job, and though the two girls couldn’t be more different, they look out for one another. And when one of the villagers viciously assaults Sister Job and she and Yrsa mortally wound him in self-defense, they’re forced to take to the sea to escape the wrath of the warriors of Mimir’s Stool, and worse, the wrath of the gods. Can either of them escape their fate? Do they even want to?

From the acclaimed author of Ironhead, or, Once a Young Lady, comes Daughter of Doom, a dark historical adventure about fate, faith, and free will set on the rollicking seas in the age of Vikings.