Meet the Book Babes at Relay for Life 2008!

Come on out to the Des Plaines/Park Ridge Relay for Life, Friday, May 16, beginning at 6 p.m. at Maine West High School in Des Plaines. This is the sixth year the library's team "The Book Babes" have been not just raising funds, but crushing the competition, in my humble opinion. Maybe that's just pride talking, because this year, I'm honored to be babe-a-licious enough (or, perhaps, bookish enough?) to be part of the library team. Want to help us make a difference? There are lots of ways to get involved.

You can make an online donation through our team's Web site: The Book Babes.
So far we have raised just over $4,000.00.

You can also come out to the Relay event and buy raffle tickets, snacks, luminaria and other items -- all proceeds going straight to Relay for Life. Our own team is raffling off an iPod Shuffle with a $25 iTunes gift card; a Gevalia coffee maker; and a beautiful necklace of freshwater pearls from a well-known local jeweler. We're also supplying the sweet treats to keep Relay walkers on their feet, so stop by the Book Babes booth for cookies, brownies, candy and more, with every penny benefiting cancer research. Can't make it? Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we spend a chilly night "bookin' for the cure."

Making this year's Relay extra special for us is that we're walking in honor of four of our co-workers, all cancer survivors and we're just overwhelmingly delighted about that:
From left to right: Kathy Kyrouac, our Webmaster; Pat Horne, one of our Children's Librarians; Bob Blanchard, Adult Services Librarian (aka "Johnny Bulb-Head"); and Barbara Saletnik, from Circulation Services.

Many of the Book Babes walk because we also have family members, friends and loved ones who have been lost to cancer or, on a more hopeful note, who have survived cancer thanks to the marvelous research being done for a cure. When I visited the Book Babes at Relay last year, I had already experienced the pain of losing two good friends to this terrible illness, but more recently had celebrated with another close friend upon his recovery. Since last year's Relay, my own father has been diagnosed with cancer, but after only a short round of treatment, he is doing better than ever. That tells me that the research and hard work is paying off, and made me determined to lend my own efforts to the cause of the Book Babes and Relay for Life. So please come out and see us tomorrow, Friday, May 16, 2008, at Maine West High School, 1755 S. Wolf Road in Des Plaines. We'll be setting up shop and opening for business around 6 p.m. and your favorite library folks would love it if you said hello. I'll try to post more pictures and an update over the weekend.