Choosing Kindness
The Knox Public Library is the proud recipient of the Libraries Transform Communities Engagement Grant from the American Library Association (ALA). With part of our grant funds, we were able to purchase copies of the Fred Rogers book, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember, to host a book discussion. The book discussion took place on Thursday, September 9, 2021 at 6:00 p.m. at the Knox Community Park (Peanut Park).
We were also able to purchase additional hot spot devices for our patrons to borrow. To find out more about these, please click here.
Since Mister Rogers promoted kindness, the book discussion’s main theme was kindness and how to unite our community. Twelve participants met to discuss the book. During the book discussion, we discussed our favorite quotes from the book and what they meant to the person. We also share ideas on how to promote kindness in our community. Participants agreed that kindness and change needs to come from younger people and they can help spread kindness through their actions. Participants shared handing out kindness tags (more about those below) and we discussed World Kindness Day (November 13th) and the Day of Kindness to honor Mister Rogers (May 23rd). Participants enjoyed sharing their favorite passages from the book and talking with others about how to promote kindness throughout our community, which everyone agreed was important in uniting. Participants were also able to keep a copy of a second Mister Rogers book Life’s Journeys According to Mister Rogers and were encouraged to share their copies with a friend.
Everyone who participated in the book discussion received brag tags that we created which say “Choose Kindness” on them. We also have these brag tags (or kindness tags) available at the library for anyone to take. We encourage you to share these tags with someone who shows you kindness or you see doing a kind act, such as someone letting you go ahead of them in the grocery store checkout line, someone you see picking up trash along the sidewalk, someone sweeping leaves off of a neighbor’s sidewalk, etc. We want to reward and spread kindness throughout our community.
We are curious to where the Kindness tags end up. If you have received a tag, please visit this website and add your zip code to the end of the list. We will update the map weekly. Zip Code Sheet
Libraries Transforming Communities: Focus on Small and Rural Libraries is an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA) in collaboration with the Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL). Click on the logo below to learn more about ALA.
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