Borrowed & Returned

"To me, what all these books say is independence and personal choice," says Nefertiti Matos of the stacks of Braille books at NYPL's Andrew Heiskell Library. In this episode, we talk about what inclusion means, whether it's creating tactile graphics so that all may encounter the visual world, or making our virtual classes accessible to kids with disabilities.

Read our transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/all-may-participate 

It’s been a rough year. So, we gathered all the good news we could find to brighten your podcast feed. Hear kids read to a therapy dog, a library love story, babies learning ASL, and adults age 90 and older learning to use Zoom.

Read our transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/good-news 

Ingrid Douglas never finished high school as a teenager. When she started looking for a better job at age sixty, she found not having a degree was a huge barrier. So, Ingrid came to the library to get her diploma. In this episode, we talk to students and instructors at BPL about how the library can be a refuge for those who have experienced trauma or adversity on their path to education.

Read our transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/education-for-all 

Hear me out: A Vietnamese refugee opens a restaurant to keep her kids out of gangs, Brooklynites on their changing borough, a daughter seeks justice after her father's death from COVID-19, giving birth during a pandemic, the meaning of shelter for families experiencing homelessness, and the last lesbian bar in Brooklyn. These are all Brooklyn stories, created as part of BPL's first ever audio storytelling workshop.

Listen to full audio stories here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/hear-me-out-part-two 

Hear me out: a Bed-Stuy kid grapples with her Brooklyn identity, a Chassidic woman follows her faith to from South Africa to Crown Heights, musicians find belonging in the South Indian music diaspora, a Brooklynite memorializes early activism in the borough, and a Black Puerto Rican land worker paves her own career path. These are all Brooklyn stories, created as part of BPL's first ever audio storytelling workshop.

Listen to the full audio stories here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/hear-me-out-part-one 

"We want all the kids to see themselves in all the stories," says Raakhee Mirchandani, author of Super Satya Saves the Day. This episode, we hear Drag Queen Cholula Lemon read Mirchandani's book, and we visit BPL's wildly popular Tibetan language storytime, which provides language refuge for thousands of Tibetan-speaking New Yorkers, and reaches thousands more across the world. Bring a kiddo along to this episode!

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/storytime-anytime 

A special episode, created in partnership with Queens Memory and the online newspaper The CITY, on grief and mourning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how we can move forward as a community.

Read our trasncript here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/missing-them