10:30am
Springtown Branch

2:30am Rincon Branch

The award-winning Puppet Art Theater performs hundreds of live performances each year throughout California. In “Tale of the Dragon’s Tail,” Princess Penny’s reaction to the dragon scare could save the king—and his gold. In “Tommy’s Pirate Adventure,” a normal boy’s dream comes true when he—and his dog Fifi—meet real pirates.
Both performances will take place Wednesday, August 5th at the Livermore Public Library. “Tale of the Dragon’s Tail” will be presented at 10:30am at the Springtown branch, located at 998 Bluebell Drive; “Tommy’s Pirate Adventure” will be performed at 2:30pm at the Rincon branch, at 725 Rincon Avenue. The free programs will take place outside, with the audience to be seated on tarps. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early for best parking and viewing opportunities, and to bring appropriate sun gear.

The Livermore Public Library’s “Be Creative @ Your Library” Summer Reading Game is a free program for all young people and their families. Children earn a variety of prizes for reading books, as well as attending storytimes, crafts, and special events at Livermore’s three library locations. Participation is free, and registration is not required to attend events. Special programs throughout the summer are scheduled to include magic shows, puppetry, animals, and international music, performance, & stories. The Summer Reading Game begins June 12, and ends August 15, 2009. Click on the Summer Reading Game link from the Livermore Public Library’s web site http://www.livermore.lib.ca.us or call 373-5504 for more information.

Will Joel Friedman

Main Library

This presentation will change the way you look at yourself, and addresses how the brain is not the same as the mind, taking a careful look at exactly what is the mind. Key ideas, stories, questions and behavioral experiments provide an opening to experience mindfulness for oneself in this experiential, interactive presentation.

Will Joel Friedman Ph.D., a seasoned licensed psychologist, has been practicing for 32 years. Friedman specializes in Presence-centered psychotherapy, addressing relationship issues, anxiety, depression and traumas through cognitive, systems, and mind-body approaches.

The Friends of the Livermore Library have generously underwritten this program. For additional events, check the library’s website at http://www.livermore.lib.ca.us.

Main Library

Samba Samba is an interactive educational workshop that uses music, rhythm, percussion instruments and drums as tools for capturing the imagination of the participants. Attendees of all ages are encouraged to dance, sing, and be transported around the globe through the sounds of drums and percussion.

The Samba Samba program will take place Wednesday, August 12th, at the Livermore Public Library, Civic Center, 1188 South Livermore Avenue. The free event will begin at 10:30am, and will take place outside the library, with the audience to be seated on tarps. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early for best parking and viewing opportunities, and to bring appropriate sun gear.

The Livermore Public Library’s “Be Creative @ Your Library” Summer Reading Game is a free program for all young people and their families. Children earn a variety of prizes for reading books, as well as attending storytimes, crafts, and special events at Livermore’s three library locations. Participation is free, and registration is not required to attend events. Special events throughout the summer are scheduled to include magic shows, puppetry, animals, and international music, performance, & stories. The Summer Reading Game begins June 12 and ends August 15, 2009. Click on the Summer Reading Game link from the Livermore Public Library’s web site http://www.livermore.lib.ca.us or call 373-5504 for more information.

Rincon Branch

The animals will be presented during a free program by Wild Things, Inc., a nonprofit organization that hous¬es injured and abandoned wildlife. Animal ambassadors from Wild Things visit schools and other groups throughout Northern California, presenting a message of conservation and environmental awareness. During the “Amazing Amazon” program, real creatures from the rainforest floor all the way up into the highest canopy will be introduced.

The Amazing Amazon presentation will take place at 2:30pm on Wednesday, August 12th, at the Rincon Branch Library, 725 Rincon Avenue in Livermore. The free public program will be presented outside the library, with the audience to be seated on tarps. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early for best parking and viewing opportunities, and to bring protective sun gear.

The Livermore Public Library’s “Be Creative @ Your Library” Summer Reading Game is a free program for all young people and their families. Children earn a variety of prizes for reading books, as well as attending storytimes, crafts, and special events at Livermore’s three library locations. Participation is free, and registration is not required to attend events. Special events throughout the summer are scheduled to include magic shows, puppetry, animals, and international music, performance, & stories. The Summer Reading Game begins June 12 and ends August 15, 2009. Click on the Summer Reading Game link from the Livermore Public Library’s web site http://www.livermore.lib.ca.us or call 373-5504 for more information.

Main Library

Main Library

The Crooked Jades are on a mission to reinvent old-time bluegrass music for a modern age, pushing boundaries and blurring categories with their fiery, soulful performances. Innovative, unpredictable and passionate, they bring their driving dance tunes and haunting ballads to rock clubs, festivals, traditional folk venues and concert halls across America and Europe.

Known for their rare and obscure repertoire, beautiful original compositions, inspired arrangements and eclectic, often vintage instrumentation, The Crooked Jades began with band leader/founder Jeff Kazor's vision to revive the dark and hypnotic sounds of pre-radio music. With this old-time foundation, the band has created the unique Crooked Jades sound by exploring the roots of Americana and interweaving the diverse musical influences of Europe and Africa.

A collective of West and East Coast pickers with equal parts attitude and respect, the band performs with a thrilling energy that has audiences on their feet dancing and critics comparing them to everyone from The New Lost City Ramblers and The Pogues, to Gillian Welch, Nick Cave and Tom Waits.

Started by Kazor in San Francisco from a kitchen jam in 1994, The Crooked Jades have 6 critically-acclaimed CDs, including “World’s on Fire” (on the sound track for Sean Penn’s 2007 film “Into the Wild”), two CDs co-produced by alt-country’s Richard Buckner, and “Seven Sisters” the soundtrack to an award-winning PBS documentary. Their brand new release “Shining Darkness” features the current lineup playing 19 original songs and instrumentals on harmonium, bao (Vietnamese one-string box zither) and mbira in symphony with string-band standards fiddle, banjo, guitar ukulele and arco bass.

The Friends of the Livermore Library have generously underwritten this program as part of the Friends Authors and Arts Series. For additional events, check the library’s website at http://www.livermore.lib.ca.us.

Main Library

Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, calls Haji’s book “a moving meditation on the meaning of family, tradition, and the ties that bind...lyrical and touching. It is a story of mothers and daughters, and a story of a young Muslim woman at crossroads, shaped by the forces of her past, her religion, her roots, her culture, and her own determined will.”

Nafisa Haji was born and mostly raised in Los Angeles—mostly, because there were years also spent in Chicago, Karachi, Manila, and London. Her family migrated from Bombay to Karachi in 1947 during Partition, when the Indian Subcontinent was divided into two states. In the late 1960s, Nafisa’s parents came to the United States, shortly before she was born, in order for her father to study engineering at Stanford. When she was six years old, they stuck with their original plan of “going back home” and moved to Karachi. In less than a year, they knew that they had become more American than they realized and came back to Los Angeles.

Nafisa studied American history at the University of California at Berkeley, taught elementary school in downtown Los Angeles for seven years in a bilingual Spanish program (she speaks Spanish fluently), and earned a doctorate in education from the University of California at Los Angeles. With an unfinished novel left long behind, she seized upon the birth of her son—when she decided to stay home fulltime—as an excuse to go back to writing, learning to use nap times and weekends very efficiently. She started writing short stories at first, which then developed into an idea for a novel. She now lives in northern California with her husband and son and is currently working on her second novel. Nafisa maintains close ties in Pakistan, traveling there regularly to visit family.

The Friends of the Livermore Library have generously underwritten this program as part of the Friends Authors and Arts Series. For additional events, check the library’s website at http://www.livermore.lib.ca.us