Families

A wave of wonderful new online tools, like the HeritageQuest database from ProQuest, makes doing your family history research much easier than it used to be! Here’s why:

The key to accessing your ancestors is accessing documents, the paper records they left behind as they went through life. You’ll need to look for your relatives in all kinds of documents, like birth, marriage, and death registers; cemetery rosters; and military service records. To locate all these records and get a complete picture of your heritage, you’ll have to visit lots of different libraries, archives, courthouses, and cemeteries.

This is where HeritageQuest becomes a real lifesaver for you because it provides easy at-home access to all kinds of documents, all in one place!

Headquarters Theater, Friday, April 23, 4:15-5:00. 
Grades K-6.
Call 540-372-1144 to sign up now!  

Looking for a way to learn more about recycling and how to take care of Mother Earth?

Bring your family and enjoy skits, crafts, games, face painting, and activities sponsored by various local community groups at our Earth Day celebration! 
We are pleased to welcome the fun folks from Caledon Natural Area State Park, Friends of the Rappahannock, R-Board, Fredericksburg Parks and Recreation, Master Gardeners, Virginia Tech Extension Office. Thanks to the Virginia Cooperative Extension Office, each child will receive a free seedling!

Organized by CRRL’s own Teen Council!

Our libraries will be closed on Thanksgiving and the day after, so now's the time to pick up some reading to take you through the holiday. We have many cookbooks to help plan the feast, but of our other collections these three books tell stories especially true to life and true to the heart to help make your holiday a warm one.

It's time to stand in line and complain about the high cost of school supplies. Parents groan, whip out their pieces of plastic, gnash their teeth, and pay up. It's what we do every year. Even after checking for the best sales and rebates, the total is still hard to take. But this is what we have to do. And yet, have you ever considered that you are lucky to be able to do it at all?
Read on for ways you can help less fortunate kids get the supplies they need.

When Frank McCourt passed last month, he left behind memoirs filled with anguish, love, and dark merriment.  Personal experiences are what this Irish-American author took and shaped into works of sorrowful beauty.

   At a recent library storytime, the children, parents, caregivers and I had lots of fun reading new picture books, but I was reminded yet again about the power of old favorites. 
“Yum, Yum, What Fun” by Mara Bergman starts out with two friends and their little dog Harry baking bread, when who should come clomping in through the window but a crocodile! 

Camping, fishing, hiking, history, grand vistas, and horseback riding--there are so many possibilities in our national parks.

This is the time of year when delicious fruits and vegetables fill the homegrown gardens and bins at farmers' markets. An abundance of heirloom tomatoes, sweet corn and sweeter peaches make August the right time to practice the very rewarding work of preserving.