100. Hennepin County, North Regional Library

This is a big building! I immediately noticed three large (3-4 feet long, a couple of feet high?) wooden sculptures of leaves. They looked large enough to serve as benches, but I don't know if that's allowed. Adult fiction and periodicals are in a room with windows on three sides. One side of a large kiosk is dedicated to language learning materials. There is a separate area for job search activities, with a bunch of computers, and other computers are available for adult use.

The teen and kids area has tall windows on two sides and a glass-enclosed room for meetings and programs. One unique item is a two-sided desk with sloped sides, kid-sized, with a wide slot at the top to hold books. Picture Bob Cratchit's desk with the legs drastically shortened--and wide enough for three kids to sit at, on each side. Another is a fantastic tall chair at the side of a bright rug; I have to believe, and I should have asked, that this would be used for story-telling. It would certainly create an aura of "listen to the story and you will hear something special."

There is a hard-to-describe set of three quasi-rooms in a row, in the middle of the floor, with unusual reading spaces. I hope someone from this branch will get in here and leave a comment about these. They are very unusual.

I saw a big binder of Read Write Draw papers. Six computers for kids were keeping 10 youngsters quietly occupied, and all eight teen computers were busy.

8/22/12, bus

I thought of going in and asking permission to take a picture of the leaf-like sculptures--but the library was closed, so I settled for taking two pictures from the car.