Happy Halloween! This weekend, Lindenhurst Memorial Library held its first Masquerade Ball. Children dressed up in costume, and came to the library during a three hour window of time to play games, create art, and pose for pictures. Two of our talented librarian trainees, Jeanna Matias and Justine Rivera, 
designed table stations for patrons to engage with. We experimented with Facebook Live video on our library page, and streamed three short videos during the event to encourage patrons to come visit the library, immediately! We received great comments about the event on the videos afterwards from patrons that attended. And, in just 24 hours, the videos generated a total of 4,900 views! Talk about easy publicity!
There was orange and black play dough, velvet art bookmarks and halloween themed decorations, monster mini golf, create a monster lab, vampire doughnuts and clementine jack-o-lanterns to decorate, and silly pumpkin faces using large sheets of orange construction paper with stickers. A plastic kiddie pool became a grave digging expedition as some felt bones and ghost cut outs were hidden amongst colorful shredded paper for young patrons to dig through. 
Did I mention that members of the 501st Legion stopped by for photos? That’s right: Darth Vader and pals were on hand to treat our tiny trick or treaters to a visual delight. In fact, quite a few grown ups were on line to snap a photo as well! The Masquerade Ball definitely had its fair share of Star Wars themed costumes, including myself as Princess Leia. If you look closely, you can see that I am holding a baby ewok! Okay, it is actually my puppy Abby, who is in training to become a therapy dog. She happily wore her costume and interacted with patrons throughout the program.
Lindenhurst Library belongs to the Suffolk Cooperative Library System, which started a Lending Library last year. Thanks to the unique items in the Lending Library, we were able to borrow a cotton candy machine and an old fashioned popcorn cart to hand out treats. Sixteen tween and teen volunteers came to assist staff at the tables, which helped keep the steady flow of activity organized and easy to follow. Our final count? 115 happy patrons in a three hour window came to the library on a Saturday morning to parade in their costumes and enjoy some family down time together. Now that is a true treat!
Lisa Kropp is the Assistant Director of the Lindenhurst Memorial Library and co-chair of ALSC’s Liaisons to National Organizations Committee.
