For Educators
We love to support our local schools and preschools. See below for an overview of our resources and programs that can supplement the educational experience for students and teachers. Please reach out if you have any questions/additional needs.
View and complete the form here. Use this form to let us know about upcoming class projects. Please give us at least one week's notice. The earlier you alert us, the more we can do to help.
Out-of-town students receive a 1-year library card which gives them access to the collection and eBooks. Come to the Library or sign up online here. Already have a library card from another CT library? Register your out-of-town library card at New Canaan Library.
Contact us to arrange librarian visits to your school and/or class visits to the Library. We love working with students of any age, from preschool through high school, and we can tailor visits to meet your curricular needs.
Our librarians can pull books on any topic your class is studying. Contact us at [email protected] or (203) 594-5002. Running short on time? Books can be checked out to you for fast and easy pickup. Have a little more time? We can pull books for you to browse at your own pace.
Our Family Services librarians can provide an in-depth overview of our services at the Library. Demo MakerLab tools like our Cricut machine, listen to themed book talks to supplement your lesson plans, or sign up for an educator library card. Email Rebecca Fox or Dajana Martinez to schedule your visit.
- Our SEL storytimes incorporate skills such as compassion, kindness, empathy, cooperation, diversity, and respect in exciting and engaging ways. We can present these storytimes at your school or you can request to borrow a box for classroom use.
- Our Kindness Storytime provides concrete examples of what kindness can look like, what it means to be kind, and respect for friends.
- Our Feelings Storytime provides an opportunity for children to identify their emotions, find constructive and respectful ways to interact with one another, and practice mindfulness to regulate emotions.
- The SEL Storytime Boxes include songs, QR codes to tunes, rhymes, felts, and books.
- Reach out to Dajana Martinez to schedule our visit to your preschool or to borrow a box.
Recommended Reads
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The Demon of Unrest
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter.
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My Beloved Monster
“The most brilliant feline portrait in literary history.” –People Magazine. Caleb Carr has had special relationships with cats since he was a young boy in a turbulent household, famously peopled by the founding members of the Beat Generation, where his steadiest companions were the adopted cats that lived with him both in the city and the country. As an adult, he has had many close feline companions, with relationships that have outlasted most of his human ones. But only after building a three-story home in rural, upstate New York did he enter into the most extraordinary of all of his cat pairings: Masha, a Siberian Forest cat who had been abandoned as a kitten, and was languishing in a shelter when Caleb met her. She had hissed and fought off all previous carers and potential adopters, but somehow, she chose Caleb as her savior.
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How to Eat in Space
A kid-friendly, accessible, and humorous picture book about the sometimes complicated task of eating while in outer space--spoiler: it's not as simple as it seems!
Without a kitchen, plates, or cups, eating in space isn't easy. When food floats (and so do you), remember:
1. Be patient: Preparing a meal without gravity's help takes time.
2. Avoid crumbs: They get everywhere!
3. Clean up after yourself: Today's stray snack could become tomorrow's smelly surprise.
Once you learn the dos and don'ts, you'll be eating like an astronaut in no time!
This fact-filled look at the sometimes complicated task of eating while away from Earth will show young readers what it's really like to live on the space station, with engaging back matter that takes a deep dive into the topic and features photos of real NASA astronauts! -
Little Faces Big Feelings
Learn about the emotions behind the faces of over 90 different children, then use the included mirror to practice understanding your own feelings! See why kids are happy, sad, mad/frustrated, surprised, scared, brave, bored, silly, and/or tired with beautiful photographs showing every bit of context (like welcoming a new sibling, falling off a bike, or getting ready to sleep). Every spread shows the same emotion on 10 different children's faces so family members and educators can demonstrate emotions look different for everyone. Created with neurodiverse children in mind! Complete with family discussion questions and a feelings wheel in the back matter.
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What Moves the Dead
When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.
What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.
Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all. -
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret
Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. -
The Haunting of Hill House
The greatest haunted house story ever written, the inspiration for a 10-part Netflix series directed by Mike Flanagan and starring Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, and Timothy Hutton
First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers--and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. -
My Cousin Rachel
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING RACHEL WEISZ AND SAM CLAFLIN!
"From the first page...the reader is back in the moody, brooding atmosphere of Rebecca."--The New York Times
From Daphne du Maurier, the legendary author of Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, comes a gothic classic set in beautiful, mysterious, and eerie Cornwall.
Philip Ashley's older cousin Ambrose, who raised the orphaned Philip as his own son, has died in Rome. Philip, the heir to Ambrose's beautiful English estate, is crushed that the man he loved died far from home. He is also suspicious. While in Italy, Ambrose fell in love with Rachel, a beautiful English and Italian woman. But the final, brief letters Ambrose wrote hint that his love had turned to paranoia and fear.
Now Rachel has arrived at Philip's newly inherited estate. Could this exquisite woman, who seems to genuinely share Philip's grief at Ambrose's death, really be as cruel as Philip imagined? Or is she the kind, passionate woman with whom Ambrose fell in love? Philip struggles to understand Rachel's intentions, knowing Ambrose's estate, his future, and his sanity, hang in the balance.
An atmospheric mystery full of doubt and paranoia, My Cousin Rachel is a suspenseful gothic treat for long-time fans and new readers of Daphne du Maurier.
Praise for Daphne du Maurier:
"Miss du Maurier is... a storyteller whose sole aim is to bewitch and beguile. And in My Cousin Rachel she does both, with Rebecca looking fondly over her shoulder."--New York Times
"Double-distilled readers' delight."--Manchester Guardian
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The Hacienda
Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches...
During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.
But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.
When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark the doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?
Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will save her.
Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.
Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom. -
Mexican Gothic
An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes “a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror” (Kirkus Reviews) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.
Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.