Full Text:

Reading Garden Invites Thoughts of Spring

(with cut)

BY DOROTHY EVANS

The end of December might not be the best time to sit outside the Cyrenius H.

Booth Library beside your three-year-old child, huddled together on a wooden

bench reading Dr Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas or Bartholemew and the

Oobleck.

Especially not lately with snow and sleet -- if not oobleck -- raining down.

But we predict that come January 1998, many library patrons accompanied by

young children who leave and enter the library nearby the Reading Garden, will

be tempted to linger.

At the least, they might want to walk around the flagstone path under the big

sugar maple, admire the new statue of the little boy sitting on a stump

reading, and try sitting down on each one of the three teak benches or under

the trellis.

These garden enhancements were all donated by the three local clubs -- the

Garden Club of Newtown, the Town and Country Garden Club and the Horticulture

Club of Newtown -- by the family and friends of Helen Davis Gill, and by

Emanuel Raices in memory of his wife, Bryna Untermeyer Raices.

The little statue was put in place this November by Robert Stokes and is the

most recent addition.

"It's been on [Library Director Janet Woycik's] wish list for years. She had

seen one in Bermuda. We located one, and Bob cemented it down to the stump."

Now, it seems totally at home, said Mr Stokes' wife, who is Booth Library

curator Caroline Stokes.

No matter what the weather is doing, Booth Library patrons, happy to be back

in their Main Street home, will want to revisit the Outside Reading Garden.

They should walk, look and appreciate.

Think about how it will look in April when the daffodils are in bloom. Or in

June, when the hostas transplanted ten years ago from Helen Gill's perennial

garden send up tall stalks laden with purple flowers.

A Decade In The Making

The Outside Reading Garden came together through a series of donations begun

more than a decade ago.

With the long-awaited completion of the Booth Library renovation project

finally at hand, patrons will be able to see the garden frequently since its

location is adjoining the library's new side-entrance path.

"Actually, it was pretty much this way before the construction began. They

only had to move one bench," said library custodian Jim Kearns on Monday.

But a hedge of rose of Sharon bushes planted by Leslie Randall, an artist and

friend of Helen Gill, had to be taken out to make room for the new parking

lot.

"That was a shame," said Mrs Stokes.

Mrs Stokes recalled that when the garden was first being planned, Emanuel

Raices, of Newtown and New York City, walked in one day and offered to

contribute.

Mr Raices had been the husband of Bryna Untermeyer Raices, a writer, editor

and longtime resident of Great Hill Road in Newtown. She had been a longtime

friend of the Booth Library and was also the former wife of another well-known

Newtown resident, the late editor and poet Louis Untermeyer, with whom she

collaborated on more than 15 books. Mr Untermeyer died in 1977, and Bryna

Untermeyer and Mr Raices were married in June 1979.

"Manny Raices walked in and asked what he could give. ...We said we needed a

pathway to enclose the benches and make a statement around the garden," Mrs

Stokes said.

"OK," he said. "You go out and get a price, and I'll be delighted to do it."

Now that the statue of the little boy provides a central focus point for the

surrounding benches and circular path, the Outside Reading Garden seems

complete.

As an aside, Mrs Stokes noted that Eagle Scout Reid Warner chose a similar

statue for the children's garden behind the children's room, also of a little

boy reading.

"You can't have too many of those," Mrs Stokes decided.