Placed around the Keller Public Library along an existing path will be 20 plaques displaying pages from a children’s story, three sculptures from a company called Wind & Weather, a wall mural from a commissioned artist and more.
The mural will be located at the old Keller Senior Activities Center next to the library. The center will be the new home of the library annex and the Friends of the Keller Library Bookstore, according to a June 7 City Council meeting.
Wendy Dunn, children’s services librarian for Keller Public Library, said the project promotes early literacy and provides an outdoor activity for families.
Funding for this project comes from a $65,000 grant to the library.
The project is also part of a memorial to Lisa Harper Wood, the former director for the Keller Public Library for 20 years.
As director, Wood started a program called Harvest Stew, “a fall festival that served stew and cornbread to community members in the park behind the library,” said Rachel Reynolds, Keller communication and public engagement manager.
Jana Prock, the city’s director of library services, said she is “hoping our first book will be ‘Stone Soup,’” which was one of Wood's favorite books.
The book by Marcia Brown is about three soldiers who find a village with people frustrated from war. Hungry, the soldiers boil a pot of water with a stone that attracts villagers. The community brings items from home to add to the pot, and together, they create vegetable soup.
Organizers chose this book because it brings “the idea that if everybody comes together, you make something big and nourishing for the whole community,” Dunn said.
The project will also include a boulder along the walking trail to honor Wood with a quote from the book: “Many thanks for what you have taught us. We shall never go hungry now that we know how to make soup from stones.”
The plaques will display the actual pages from the book in the correct sequence along the path, according to Dunn. The Keller Public Library hopes to change the book quarterly.
“We always try to, with everything we do, enrich the lives of the citizens of Keller,” Dunn said.
Maya Contreras is an intern from the University of North Texas Scripps Howard Foundation Emerging Journalists program. She is a senior at Prosper High School in Prosper, where she serves as the opinion editor and lead graphic designer of Eagle Nation Online.
