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02/22/2021 11:00 PMNearly 31 years ago, Mary Nyman, the part-time librarian at Daisy Ingraham Elementary School, was offered the position of full-time children’s librarian at Westbrook Public Library (WPL) by Lew Daniels, who was then WPL director. She happily accepted the offer, making sure to keep the relationship strong between the school and the library, which are neighbors.
For the ensuing decades, she welcomed Daisy’s pre-K, kindergarten, and 1st-grade classes to the children’s room to nurture the children’s love of libraries, books, and learning. But that, like so many things in 2020, came to a standstill, due to the pandemic.
“They really enjoyed walking over,” she said.
WPL has a special room, where the children would sit on a rug while she read them picture books.
“If it wasn’t nice out, I went over there” to the school, she added. “But that all changed this [school] year.”
Lyman, who is retiring on April 30, has already looked into volunteering at Daisy for the 2021-’22 school year.
“My family’s been yelling at me: ‘Don’t make too many commitments,’” she said, laughing. “I’d like to go at least twice a week and maybe work with the ESL students. They can probably help me do better with my Spanish, which is terrible. And they would probably feel good about that.”
But she has lots to do before April 30 rolls around.
The library has begun to put together a toy library, which will allow families to check out toys for three weeks at a time. The Guilford Free Library was the first on the shoreline to set one up, according to Nyman, who hopes the WPL program will be up and running in May, soon after she retires.
A non-profit entity called Traveling Toys, Inc., provided a $5,000 grant through the Westbrook Foundation to enable the library to purchase toys and other program supplies, Nyman said.
“We went on Amazon and had a ball” picking out everything from “dinosaurs to wooden blocks to Legos to glow-in-the-dark magnet tiles” as well as snap circuits, music kits containing a triangle and other basic instruments, and “make-believe kitchen stuff,” she explained.
Each toy will have to be placed in a special container and labeled with an access number. To accomplish this, Nyman hopes to enlist the help of Westbrook High School (WHS) library pages as well as library volunteers.
Library staff will sanitize each toy upon its return with a cleaning solution that’s been recommended for the purpose, she said. The amount of work involved is “why some libraries did not say ‘Yes’ at first” to the idea, Nyman guesses.
But Nyman isn’t a stranger to going out of her way for the sake of children’s programs. She has fond memories of the story hours she held on summer mornings each Wednesday at Westbrook’s Town Beach.
“That was really, really fun,” she said. “We had great attendance. We read stories, kind of gauged how long for the audience” based on the likely attention spans of the kids who showed up.
This would be followed by a craft and refreshments.
“Some kids, I know, just came for the Munchkins and lemonade, but it didn’t matter,” Nyman said with a laugh.
To hold the kids’ attention during the story, she would sit in front of the retaining wall and have the kids face her.
“That was a special thing we did for over 20 years,” she said.
Another cherished summer program was a children’s discussion group in July and August of books that have won Nutmeg Book Awards, which are chosen according to children’s votes.
“We had pretty involved book discussions,” followed by a craft and food that had some relation to the book, she explained.
Other programs, including special story hours, took place at the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge.
“The people who run it are fantastic and very supportive of the library,” she said. “If it was too hot, they have a beautiful brick building—we could go in there and it was air conditioned.”
A winter program she’s been especially fond of is the annual Holiday House Building event, which has a WPL history of roughly 25 years. House pieces were made of cardboard, rather than gingerbread, to avoid breakage, she explained.
“We used 124 pounds of confectionary sugar” to make the frosting-mortar, “so we had to use the big WHS mixer, a huge industrial-strength one,” she said.
Before moving the program to WHS, the planning group burned out three mixers.
“On Friday morning,” the day before the event, “I would go to make the mortar at the WHS cafeteria,” she explained. “So it was great to have it there so I didn’t end up schlepping everything.”
All the materials to make the houses were provided by WPL, including not just red, white, and green frosting, but blue frosting for those who celebrated Chanukah. Some attendees would bring their own candy decorations, which they then shared with other crafters.
The popular event was “really, really time consuming,” as it required cutting out pieces for at least 40 houses in advance, Nyman said.
“One of our [pages] said, I’m not coming home from college break until all those houses” are cut out, she continued. “My husband was a huge, huge help. All these programs were a success because I’ve had some wonderful volunteers over the years.”
Choosing a Path
Daniels said asking Nyman to serve as children’s librarian was a simple choice.
“I never had to think twice about our children’s services; it was just a given,” said Daniels. “She connects with everybody in an extraordinary way...She’s very well-loved in town. She’s one of the reasons people love the library.
“She cares about people to a remarkable degree,” he added. “Taking care of the kids is so important in a library because those are the future users. And you’re giving the tools for a future love of learning and there’s nothing more important in a library.
“We were so fortunate” that she accepted the WPL’s offer in 1990, said Daniels. “We knew [she] would make our children’s program top notch.”
Nyman refused to allow the pandemic to completely sideline her work.
“All during this crazy COVID time, she’s been doing virtual story hours,” Daniels continued. “She was doing that back in April of last year...Her husband, Paul, sets up cameras” in their home.
“She kept doing those services—that kind of dedication is just awesome,” he said.
One man in town posted a photo of his two children enjoying Nyman’s virtual story hour on the WPL’s Facebook page, saying he had grown up coming to the library for her story hours himself.
“It is special,” she said. “I’m going to miss it...to be able to come to work every day and be happy.”
Daniels retired in June of 2020 and Nyman remained to ensure a fluent transition from one director to the next.
“She has hung in there because she wanted to make sure everything kept running smoothly,” Daniels said.
Nyman sings the praises of both her former boss, Daniels, and the new director, Timothy Kellogg.
“I don’t think they could have made a better choice,” she said. “The town is very lucky to have him step in.
“And they’ll do a beautiful job choosing someone to take over” as children’s librarian, as well, she’s sure.