As senior library assistant at the White Salmon Valley Community Library, Heidi Henning has been running storytimes in the Gorge for nearly 20 years. As a Goldendale native, though, her background with libraries in the Gorge goes even further back.
“I can remember storytimes with Mrs. Alexander, the Goldendale librarian, when I was in preschool and just absolutely loving it,” Henning said. “I can remember watching her put books on display and thinking, ‘That’s the coolest thing in the whole world. I want to choose which books go on display.’”
When Henning was in high school in the ‘90s, she started working at the Goldendale Community Library after school, helping them with any maintenance they needed, whether that was raking leaves or mowing the lawn.
Despite the love she held for the library, working in a library as a career had never been on her radar. After graduating from Columbia Gorge Community College, she saw there happened to be an opening at the Goldendale library.
“I never thought that I would work in a library, I just kind of stumbled into it,” she said.
Henning started with driving the bookmobile part-time, which is how she found that she loved working with the library, but with children’s services in particular. After years of working her way through the Goldendale library, she got married and she and her husband started looking to move further into the Gorge. It took a quite a while, but eventually there was an opening at the White Salmon library.
Despite working there for 19 years, Henning said she’s never gotten bored.
“I do a lot of public service stuff in the library,” she said. “I’ll be at the desk helping patrons, I’ll be shelving books, and then the storytimes. I help out with the teen nights, school age programs. We do a lot of outreach to the schools, taking books to the Lyle school, to the Whitson after-school program. It’s a lot of variety.”
Henning absolutely has a favorite part of her job, however: Storytime. She does two storytimes a week, with one for toddlers on Tuesdays and one for preschoolers on Thursdays.
When it comes to storytime, Henning tries to mix structure with that natural, fun toddler chaos. There is always a routine, with a set way every storytime begins and end, but she doesn’t go in with a theme, she just picks whatever books she thinks will be fun for the kids. She also knows that it won’t always go the way she plans.
“I always have a big stack of books, it always depends on how the crowd’s feeling with it,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t get through all three of them, sometimes it’s just one, and that’s totally fine.”
Because Henning has been doing storytime in White Salmon for almost 20 years, she’s had the unique opportunity of watching kids grow up and even bring back their own children.
“I have a couple who have brought back their little ones, like little tiny kids, the second generation of storytime goers,” she said. “It kind of makes me feel old, but I love that part of it, getting to watch the kids grow up. It’s still a pretty small community, so you really get to know people and you really get to watch the kids grow up. It starts with the baby story time and then we get to see them in the teen events when they get older. It’s really cool.”
The White Salmon Valley Community Library is located at 77 NE Wauna Ave. in White Salmon, and is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. For information on the library, including upcoming events, visit fvrl.org/loc/white-salmon-valley.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.