Librarian Matt Ulman offering guidance to Seung Ha and Kenneth Saito.
At a table in the brightly lit children’s section on the second level of Ives Main Library on Elm Street, two budding chess masters considered their next move.
“That knight was protecting your queen, so once you let me capture your knight, that meant the queen was unprotected,” Seung Ha, 9, told Kenneth Saito, who’s 11.
“I guess that wasn’t the best move,” Kenneth acknowledged.
This was his first time at Junior Chess, which meets each Thursday afternoon from 4 to 5 p.m. at the library.
On this particular afternoon, Kenneth and Seung were the only participants.
Melissa Lopez, children's librarian.
Melissa Lopez, a children’s librarian working at the circulation desk, said she expects the numbers to pick up. “Chess has been around for years,” she said. “Pre-pandemic, we had a pretty sizeable group, and now it’s just starting to gear up again.”
Chess fans Naomi Saito, Youjung Barn, and Youjung's daughter.
Kenneth learned to play chess when he was 6, then got away from it, said his mother, Naomi Saito, who was following the action with Seung’s mother, Youjung Barn.
That was until “The Queen’s Gambit,” the massive hit series on Netflix, which the family watched during the pandemic. It revived Kenneth’s interest.
“Chess is a way to develop young brains, and it’s good for strategizing and for critical thinking,” Saito said. “Only good things come from it.”
Seung had the advantage. It was his fourth time at Junior Chess.
“Yeah, I like it,” he said, studying the board, as librarian Matt Ulman, a self-described intermediate-level chess player, closely observed the contest. “It’s fun.”
Margaret Girgis with a read-along audiobook.
Junior chess is among a wealth of programs in the children’s section that are making their return to the library this spring, according to Margaret Girgis, manager of the Young Minds & Family Learning Department.
Girgis, who’s been at Ives Main for seven years, talked about the impact of the pandemic on the children’s librarians on her team.
“We’re performers in a sense,” she said. “We were happy to do digital storytime, but it was harder to interact and read our audiences and feel our audiences.”
There was at least one happy revelation from the last two years: “It wasn’t that we didn’t know it before, but it’s really driven home how much the community loves us,” she said. “When we were only doing curbside pickup, parents were telling us they would go crazy if they didn’t have library books at home.”
Those comments, she said, “made us realize the impact librarians can have through books that we pick and suggest, as well as the wide variety of resources we provide.”
It also raised the stakes. “We had to get really creative about how to reach our audiences.”
Cake pans for young bakers.
In addition to the digital storytime, the library has offered take-and-make kits ranging from Japanese book binding to teacup candles to homemade mozzarella cheese. Borrowers can also access board games and cake pans.
“Many kids since the pandemic have become bakers, so this is something that has been helping feed into this interest and we also have cookbooks they can take out,” Girgis said, as she proceeded to the section for read-along audiobooks.
“What’s cool about this is you can read it just like a picture book and you can also listen to it,” she said. “We have some parents say it’s been a lifesaver.”
She said her mission is “to get ‘em young and get ‘em interested.”
Diagram of butterfly life cycle.
“Learning is a lifelong process,” she said, standing in front of a wall adorned with a colorful diagram of the butterfly life cycle. “When you come to the library, we want to help kids associate learning with joy.”
Over at the junior chess table, Seung was deciding whether to castle his king.
“Let me explain why you would do it,” Ulman told him. “The king moves two spaces, either the left or the right, and the rook jumps over it.”
Girgis praised the staff for their adaptability over the last two years. “Everyone pitched in,” she said. “If someone came up with a craft or an activity that kids and their families would enjoy doing together, we’d have that person take the lead.”
That was true of junior chess. “Now that we’re restarting, we wanted to do something that we could offer on a controlled basis,” she said.
“I asked my staff, does anyone besides me play chess, and Matt said ‘I do,’ and he was game to lead the program.”
By then, the chess match between Kenneth and Seung was over, with Seung having triumphed. Ulman was offering some additional pointers.
Kenneth was philosophical in defeat. “I was going to lose anyway,” he said. “I just want to lose so I can learn.”
It is wonderful that the library has created all of these activities in addition to books. Chess instruction and baking pans and other creative learning kits available to loan out to library members really expands the education and knowledge options for the community.