Thanks to a patron’s suggestion and the keen eye of a Park Grove librarian, the library will begin hosting a Spanish book club, conducted in Spanish, and focusing on works by Spanish language authors.

The first meeting will take place August 11, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. and the club will meet monthly on the second Saturday of each month. The first title the group will discuss will be The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (La casa en Mango Street, escrito por Sandra Cisneros).

Librarian Michele Cornelius says the club went from idea to reality when a patron left a programming suggestion at the bottom of a completed Adult Summer Reading activity card. Cornelius found the note and was able to speak to the patron in person about her idea. After learning that a group of several native speakers was interested in a book club in Spanish, Cornelius set out to make it happen.

While Cornelius does speak some Spanish, she says the club will be run by its members. She is providing help in securing titles, supplying questions to help get meeting conversations started, and is working to add more Spanish books to the library’s collection.

The group of interested attendees selected the titles from a list Cornelius put together, choosing to focus initially on books written originally in Spanish by native authors, rather than books translated to Spanish from other languages.

For more information about the Club de Lectura en Español, call the Park Grove Library at 651-459-2040. To see book clubs offered at all Washington County libraries, check out our Book Clubs page.