Adventure Pass temporarily shut down in 2025

Due to software issues affecting all libraries using the service, the Iowa Adventure Pass program will temporarily shut down in 2025. Any reservation already made for 2025 will be honored, but we encourage anyone with a current reservation to print those passes immediately. Customers can still make new reservations for passes that must be used by December 31, 2024. The service will return at a later time. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Weather update for 12/14/2024

All locations of the Des Moines Public Library will be open normal hours Saturday, December 14, and all locations will serve as emergency warming shelters during open hours. 

Books That Will Change Your Life: A Nonfiction Book Club

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Program Type:

Book Clubs

Age Group:

Adults
Please note you are looking at an event that has already happened.
Registration for this event is no longer open.

Program Description

Event Details

Note: We’ll be joined by local author Angela Tedesco as well as Hilary Burbank, Program Manager at Cultivate: Local Food Connections, a Des Moines-based non-profit with a mission to strengthen our local food system with a focus on supporting small-scale producers and regenerative farming practices.

Feel free to come to meet the author, even if you haven't read the book yet!

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Join librarians Dennis and Elizabeth for a monthly conversation around a life-changing nonfiction book.  Each month we’ll select a book that will change your perspective, give you new strategies for handling life’s challenges, or deepen your understanding of a topic.

Some of the books have been recommended by local community leaders who told us which books inspired them in their lives and work. Other selections are our favorites or are popular with you, our patrons (based on length of holds lists or number of checkouts), or have otherwise won acclaim.

This month we will be reading "Finding Turtle Farm: My Twenty-Acre Adventure in Community-Supported Agriculture" in which local author and retired farmer Angela Tedesco shares her story of starting and running an organic farm, one of the first Community Supported Agriculture operations in the Upper Midwest. The author, as well as Hilary Burbank from the local organization, Cultivate: Local Food Connections, will join us for the discussion.

Burbank says that “Reading Finding Turtle Farm will transform how you think about your food, and how it gets to your plate.  Valuing our bodies and what goes into them can lead us to value the process that food goes through from the soil, to the care of the farmer, then transport and arrival to your fork.  Finding Turtle Farm covers numerous aspects of the web of life and how we can care for it and impact not only our Earth, but ourselves. After reading this book, you'll want to strengthen your commitment to those who grow healthy food, build the soil, and care for creation.”

Pick up your book* starting December 13 at the Central Library Pickup Window.

*UPDATE: as of 12/19, all copies of the book are currently checked out. 

Disclaimer(s)

Central Parking

Free library parking is available in Central's underground parking garage for two hours per visit. Parking around the library is metered at various costs from 9 a.m. - 9 p.m. Monday-Saturday.