From our friends at ReVive, the organization with whom we partner each year to provide Christmas Baskets for families:

Christmas Basket List-Making Elves Needed! Come be a part of Christmas Baskets 2016, ReVive Center's legacy Christmas gift program.

We need list-making volunteer elves for Christmas Basket registration on Saturday, June 25 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with lunch provided. All registrations are held at ReVive Center, 1668 W. Ogden Ave., Chicago.

When selecting this summer's One Book, One Oak Park title, Assistant Manager of Materials Services Kathleen Spale said she and her team wanted to choose a book that's not only a great read-well-written, popular, and award-winning-but one that's also challenging and prompts conversations that can help us grow.

The goal of the community reading program for adults and teens, now in its third year, is to explore a theme that matters most to Oak Parkers and to this community's future. This year, the library considered recommendations from staff and patron surveys asking for the best books of 2015. Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me stood out, Spale said, for the way it faces "head on, in a no-holds-barred, brutally honest, and provocative way, issues of race, class, and democracy that are affecting all of us not only as individuals, but also as communities like Oak Park and the country as a whole."

Written as an especially personal and compelling letter from Coates to his adolescent son, Between the World and Me tackles America's racial past and present. A #1 New York Times best-seller and winner of the National Book Award, it is a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son regarding race. Both digital and print copies are available at the library, and all three library buildings will host related events (at this link) in June and July.

"Here is an opportunity for us to grow as individuals, an opportunity to grow as a community," Spale said. "The library is providing opportunities to open this dialogue and connect deeply with others over conversations that we might never bring up otherwise."