After Irene: A small-town Adirondack library needs your help

My heart just about broke on an afternoon drive today.

I'd gone with my meteorologist husband to take photographs of flood damage in Essex County, just to our south. Roads were washed out, bridges closed or in pieces, familiar sights to anyone who's seen news coverage coming out of Vermont this week.  But these tiny towns along Adirondack rivers haven't gotten much media attention.

"Go on up ahead," one town supervisor told us from his pickup. "You need to see Upper Jay. It's awful."

We made our way through roads that were down to one lane, and took detours when there was no road.

"I hope the library fared okay," I told my husband as we drove. The Wells Memorial Library is small, but it's charming and has a ton of heart. One of my first-ever author events happened at this library, a cozy, casual reading sponsored by the Adirondack Center for Writing. I remember watching kids coming in to choose books, right before the event started.  You can tell when kids feel at home in a place, when they know it's truly their library, and these kids did.

But as we got closer to the library today, we saw more and more scenes like this.

The AuSable River,  so peaceful today, had turned into a raging flood when Irene passed through over the weekend. See the mark in the middle of the zero on this speed limit sign?

That's how high the water came.

As we drove around a bend in the road today, my husband slowed down. "Whoa…look at all the stuff in front of that house."

But it wasn't a house. It was the library.

They lost virtually their entire children's collection. All of the picture books.

"They were all on the lower shelves," library director Karen Rappaport explained, "so the kids could reach them."

She looked at the heap of books in the yard, then out toward the river, quiet in the background today, and shook her head. "We've just never seen anything like this."

She let us walk through the building to see just how devastating the flood waters had been. Old books and documents from the library's special collections were spread out on tables to dry.

An attempt to save what could be saved…

But so much couldn't.

At one point during our visit, a small cheer rose up from a corner of the library. Karen had discovered five dry picture books, high on a cart, waiting to be reshelved. "Look!" she showed me. "Paddington."

This part of the Adirondacks isn't a wealthy area, and many families are dealing with devastating losses of their own right now.  So often, the library is a refuge for families in times like this, so it's sad to think of this community's kids not having books to read.

Paddington is a start. And I'm sending a set of all my kids' books to be part of the library's new collection.

Would you like to help, too?  Here's how we can rebuild the children's collection of a small Adirondack library…

1. Send a donation. Checks may be made payable to the Wells Memorial Library.

2. Send a new, hardcover children's book. Picture books are needed most. They were all destroyed except the five waiting to be re-shelved and those that were signed out to homes that didn't get flooded.

Here's the address for donations:

Wells Memorial LibraryP.O. Box 57Upper Jay, NY 12987

Authors & illustrators: If you have a spare author copy of a book you'd like to donate, the library would love that.

Children's Book Editors & Publishers: If you're cleaning out the shelves of new children's books in your office & would like to send a care package, it would be most welcome.

Bloggers: If you have hardcover review copies of kids' books that you're finished reading, the library will make sure they get into kids' hands. (Note: No ARCs, please.)

Both monetary donations and new children's and YA books may be sent at any time. Library director Karen Rappaport assures me that books can be stored safely until the library is ready to reopen. I hope it's soon.

Thanks in advance to anyone who's able to help!

One more thing…I suspect that Upper Jay is not the only community library that lost much of its children's collection when Irene came through.  If you know of others, and you have specific information from the library about how people can help (this is important…we don't want to flood already overburdened libraries with donations they don't need)  please feel free to comment and share that information. I'd be happy to start a list so that  people interested in rebuilding community libraries throughout the flooded areas can learn how to help.

Editing to add information about another library in need: I've had a few people comment that the Keene Library not far away suffered similar losses as well as structural damage and may need donations to rebuild. I'll try to get more specific information on this & will share when I do.

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