Hibernation is over! A few months ago, I was giving you advice on how to make it through the snow days with your sanity intact. Now, I am thrilled to say that spring is officially here!
Students in the Levittown School District will be enjoying Spring Break from April 2nd-12th. Have no fear, parents: The LPL is here to help you plan your day trips. By now, you should be familiar with our bimonthly newsletter, which is always available on our website and throughout the building; it should be your first stop for LPL programming information. There is rarely a day when the LPL is not a hopping place!
Now that the snow is finally (FINALLY!) melting, you and your family are probably itching to get out and explore. One of my favorite services offered by the LPL is our Museum Pass Program. Our Children’s and Reference Departments have passes to many local and Tri-State museums. They are available for loan to Levittown Union Free School District patrons, free of charge. Let me repeat that: THEY ARE FREE! Cultural enrichment is too often a luxury reserved for those who have extra money to spend. And some of these museums are not cheap to visit! For instance, we offer passes for the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City. Our pass includes admission for up to six individuals. Let’s say you are part of a group that includes three adults, one youth (7-17 years old), and two children (3-6 years old). Basic admission would cost you $115.00! That’s the cost of car repairs or groceries!
Different museum passes have different admission rules. Not every pass is like the Intrepid; some will allow two people, others may specify a certain number of adults and children that can gain admission with the pass. Depending upon which museum you are interested in visiting, you should contact the Reference or Children’s Department for further information and to reserve your passes. All museum passes operate on a Tuesday-Thursday or Friday-Monday schedule. Translation: If you take the passes out on a Tuesday, they must be returned on Thursday, and passes taken out on a Friday need to be back to the library on Monday.
We offer passes to the following museums:
The Children’s Department:
Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery & Aquarium
Nassau County Firefighters Museum
The Reference Department:
Garvies Point Museum and Preserve
New York Historical Society Museum & Library
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
Museums are a lot like libraries: they know how to make learning fun. Like libraries, museums are also great for all ages—children, teens, adults; you are never too young or too old to have fun learning something new and interesting.
Here at the LPL, we are gearing up for National Library Week (April 12th-18th), a celebration of the amazing contributions libraries and librarians make to the world. This year’s theme is “Unlimited possibilities @ your library.” We’ll have plenty to tell you as we get closer to April 12th, but right now I cannot help but note the link between this theme and our Museum Pass Program. Through our connections to the museums listed above, the Levittown Public Library can literally take you places: lush gardens, an immense aircraft carrier, a hot air balloon, and so much more. Just like when you read a great book, visiting a great museum creates a wormhole, allowing us to travel backwards and forwards in time to locations far and wide. When you visit the Heckscher Museum of Art and stand in front of a Ferdinand Richardt painting, you can imagine yourself squinting into the rumbling waves of the Niagara Falls, the mist swatting at your face; when you visit the Cradle of Aviation and see the Lunar Module, you can pretend that you are in space, among the stars and planets; when you visit The New York Botanical Garden and smell the lilacs, you will remember your childhood home and the purple lilacs that greeted you when you walked through the front gate.
The possibilities are unlimited.
Happy Reading,
Jess
