Vol 10 # 9 June15, 2026

From -

Sabah Abdulla, Branch Manager &

Nathan Page, Children's Librarian

It's summer at Oakland Public Library! Our summer program for kids, teens, and adults has begun! Enjoy reading challenges, hands-on activities, and special events for all ages. From workshops and author talks to jazz performances, there is something for everyone, and everyone wins! 

Log your reading and activities at oakland.beanstack.com to earn a free book and tote bag, plus get extra chances to win amazing additional prizes. Children can also document their summer reading and activities using the Summer Discovery Map, a fun interactive tool and keepsake available at every Oakland library. 

Through June and July, the Piedmont Avenue branch features performances every Wednesday night at 6:00 PM, craft activities for kids every Saturday at 2:00 PM, and additional enriching activities for kids and adults sprinkled throughout the summer months.

Stop by for a branch-specific calendar of events, pick up a Summer Discovery Map, and come ask about the great prizes and programs we have this summer. See you soon!

One Saturday afternoon in June, at our library -

Henna For Teens

Build. Make. Play.

Belly Dance with Nicole Maria "be the music"

Programs - For more information about each event go to the OPL website.

Ongoing -

Toddler Storytime, every Tuesday, Songs and stories for ages 18 months to 3 years. Stay and Play after Storytime with fun toys through 11:15 am.

Knitting & Crochet Circle with Susan Segal, Monday 6/22 & 7/13, 11 am - 1 pm

Join us for knitting and good company every 2nd & 4th Monday. Everyone is welcome!

Teen Pop Up Crafts, Tuesday, 6/23 & 7/14

3:30 - 4:30 pm Come to hang out, every 2nd and 4th Tuesday, and get creative with the library staff. Supplies provided.



Plot Twists & Page Turners: Book Club, Tuesday, 7/7, 6 - 7:15 pm Discover your next literary adventure at our monthly Book Club. Share your current reads or just hang out and chat about books.

Build. Make. Play., every Saturday in June & July, 2 – 3 pm

Join us for an afternoon of fun. Activities will vary from art to STEM play. Visit each week for something new.

Chair Yoga, Monday, 6/15, 6/29, 10:30 - 11:30 am

Chair Yoga is designed for those who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. Learn how a daily practice will improve your strength, flexibility, and balance.

Walk & Listen: An Audiobook Club, Saturday 6/27, 9:30 - 10:30 am

Join us at the Library for a relaxed community walk through our neighborhood. We can listen to our own audiobooks together, as we stroll and end back at the library for a short, low-pressure conversation. Bring headphones, your device, and your curiosity. Note: New to Libby or Hoopla? No problem. Arrive 15 minutes early, and we’ll help you get set up.

More Events -

Jump Squad 510, Teen Double Dutch Extravaganza! Wednesday, 6/17,

3 – 5 pm Come by and jump in at the workshop and performance. Whether you are already an elite jumper or are just getting started jumping rope, you are invited to be a part of this workshop. Learn something new and show off what you know!

The Kalimba King, Wednesday, 6/17, 6 – 7 pm Celebrate Juneteenth with a musical experience for the whole family! Join Kalimba King, Carl L. Winters, as he performs on his kalimbas—traditional African thumb pianos—sharing music that reflects the rich heritage and cultural legacy of the African diaspora. Children & families will have the opportunity to experience playing the kalimba.



Little Explorers Petting Zoo, Saturday, 6/20, 2:30 – 4:30 pm

Visit the cute and cuddly animals from the Little Explorers Petting Zoo. A popular event for the whole family. 

East Bay Vivarium, Wednesday, 6/24,

6 – 7 pm Experts from the East Bay Vivarium will share some of their scaly friends and teach us about the fascinating world of reptiles, amphibians, and bugs.

Gardening Workshop: Mediterranean Climate & Plants,

Saturday, 6/27, 2 - 3 pm Join a Master Gardener as we discuss Mediterranean climates similar to our San Francisco Bay Area, and the vast array of beautiful plants that thrive in this climate.

Duncan Playful Circus, Wednesday, 7/1, 6 – 6:45 pm Duncan Playful Circus presents of The True Color of Love a blend of juggling, unicycle, clowning, and theatrical magic.

Teens: Learn to Carve a Rubber Stamp, Tuesday 7/7, 3:30 – 4:30 pm

Come by and learn how to make your own rubber stamp featuring any design you want. All supplies and instructions included, just bring yourself (and a friend).

Mike the Magician, 7/8, 6 – 6:45 pm Mike Della Penna creates wonder and laughter with family magic performances that are equal part playful and astonishing.

Pup Up Event: Pet adoption, 7/11, 10 am – 12 pm

Meet adoptable pets and learn about adopting, fostering, volunteering and affordable pet care with Oakland Animal Services.

Teens: Learn to Cook with Chef Terry, 7/13, 2 – 3 pm

Learn how to make your own food in this hands-on workshop! 

Chef Terry will share delicious healthy recipes and techniques with you and you'll get to try a sample of what you helped make.

Teens: Engrave Your Own Keychain, Tuesday, 7/14, 3:30 – 4:30 pm

Try out our new handheld engravers and engrave a keychain that you can take home. All supplies and instructions are included, so just bring yourself (and a friend).



Mr. Elephant, Wednesday, 7/15, 6 – 6:45 pm

Mr. Elephant is an Oakland-based speech therapist who makes music for little language learners (and big ones too!) alongside his hilarious gang of puppets!

The Friends of the Piedmont Ave. Library

The Friends' Capital Campaign is gathering momentum. Hear all about it and all the exciting things that are happening at our library, at our Friends of PAL Meeting, June 23, 6:30 - 7:30 pm at the library. Please join us.

An inspiring story…

Streetcorner Library Has found a Home



For twenty years, West Oakland residents have worked for a library branch in their neighborhood. This may finally happen. Recently, the Oakland City Council approved the $3.5 million purchase of the former Community Foods at 3105 San Pablo Ave. for a new library branch.

Longtime residents Madeline Wells and Alternier Baker Cook began their work to reopen a library in the Hoover-Durant neighborhood in 2013. They highlighted the racist disinvestment that closed the Telegrove Branch Library in 1950 and the North Oakland Branch Library in 1981. Hoover-Durant, is bounded by San Pablo, 35th Street, Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and W. Grand Avenue.



The Friends of the Hoover-Durant Public Library incorporated as a 501 c 3 nonprofit in 2018. The Friends held “Streetcorner Library” events, calling on their neighbors to work for a library; they met regularly, surveyed hundreds of neighbors and met with city officials.

Purchase of the building is a giant step forward but millions more are needed to open a library. Private grants, donations, and community fundraising are the next steps.

 No one thought they could reopen a library in their neighborhood but look how close they are!

The Avid Reader by Louis Segal

I’ve been an avid reader since I could read. In high school I used to cut school to read in the Berkeley Public Library.  I’m writing this column to share some of the books I love. I hope, perhaps, you might grow to love a few of them. 

On memoirs, autobiographies, historical fictions, official biographies and

roman à clef, Part One

I’ve long been fascinated by first-person accounts of -famous, important, and humble- lives led.  Everybody has a story. Ofttimes official biographies, autobiographies and memoirs are self-serving, simply “setting the record straight” defenses of the indefensible; often they are straight up braggadocio, an “advertisements for myself.” Too often memoirs turn into MEmoirs. Shocking and stunning, they reveal more than they intend. Some are beautiful and deeply moving.  Some are raging self-promotions. The good ones reveal holistic worlds. The bad ones often reveal craven egos hell bent to obscure their crimes.

In this brief essay I will briefly review some of these that amazed me over the years.

Speak, Memory [1951] by Vladimir Nabokov is a tour de force of style, elegance, and wit. Nabokov gets amazing style points. On the other hand, he reveals himself as an oblivious aristocrat.  He neglects to mention, in the 1951 edition, the world’s conditions and the rise of both communism and fascism. Speak is a solipsistic triumph of selective memory, an obscene book of self-love.

Lady Sings the Blues [1956] by Billy Holiday co-written with William Duffy. Lady was designed as a mea culpa designed to keep her out of prison. Its opening lines are “Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three.” She pulls no punches.

A Childhood: The Biography of a Place [1978] by Harry Crews, born to two tenant farmers in Bacon County, Georgia. Crews had an impoverished childhood, suffered from polio and maiming accidents. He seemed destined to die young. He joined the Marines and fought in Korea.  He survived all. His memoir includes loving portraits of family and people, strangers and friends. It is a tale of resilience, art and a rowdy lust for life.

Time’s Shadow: Remembering a Family Farm in Kansas [2012] is by Arnold J. Bauer. Bauer grew up in on a farm in Northeast Kansas. He describes a lonely childhood listening to the Cardinal baseball games on the radio, dreaming of the bigger world. His parents are self-sufficient farmers who needed only “coffee, sugar, shoes, and overalls” from nearest town. Bauer joins the USAF and was stationed in Spain and Morocco and became a distinguished scholar and gentleman vintner. Still, he never really left the country.

Isao Fujimoto, Like Lady Day, Crews and Bauer, wrote of difficulties overcome in his Bouncing Back: Community, Resilience & Curiosity [2017]. Raised in the Yakima Valley he and his family, with WW II deported and interned with his parents in Tule Lake. Facing racism, poverty, he got a Ph.D. and became a fabled teacher at UC Davis. He has written of his life in this wonderful book. 

All of these books, save Nabokov’s, are exemplary tales of hardship and growing up. 

Next month, more on memoirs from veterans of the turbulent sixties and seventies. A few triumphant, a few humble and a few witty and full of joy, some the stars of their own movies.

Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library Board of Directors 2026

President: Ronile Lahti; Secretary: Arleen Feng; Treasurer: Joanna Smith; Judith Smith

The Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our tax ID is 84-4203055.

All contributions are tax deductible.

Donate to Friends of PAL