Come join us in the youth services department to have some dinosaur fun this month! You can help decorate our bulletin board by coloring a dinosaur, follow our dinosaur path, find 10 hidden dinos throughout the department, and check out a dino-tastic book!

Today we put a brand-new book into the collection: Ready for School: A Parent’s Guide to Playful Learning for Children ages 2 to 5 from the Sesame Street Workshop. Inside you’ll find over 250 pages of research-based best parenting and caregiving practices for young children on a variety of topics, from literacy to health to early […]

What do your children know about poverty in the United States, especially as it impacts other kids? We recently added a new memoir by Rex Ogle to our children’s collection called Free Lunch. In this book, the author does a deep dive into his first semester of middle school and the impact his home life had […]

Fri, Sept 27th – Sun, Sept 29th! The West Des Moines Public Library Friends Foundation will hold a book sale from Friday, September 27, through Sunday, September 29, in the Community Room here at the West Des Moines Public Library. The book sale’s hours will be: 9am to 6pm on Friday the 27th, 9am to […]

Can you believe it’s already the end of July? We had a great summer reading program this year at the West Des Moines Library! Our community read over 1.5 MILLION minutes this summer, and we’ve enjoyed a bunch of fun classes and events, from our Egg Drop in June with the West Des Moines Fire […]

Welcome to Summer Reading 2019! Register for your reading log on our summer reading website and print your log at home or track your reading online or via the new Beanstack Tracker App (for iOS and Android). You can also stop by the library anytime we are open to register and pick up a paper […]

In celebration of National Poetry Month and National Library Week, the West Des Moines Library is pleased to host our fourth-annual WDM Writes Poetry Night. Our event will take place Thursday, April 11 at 6:30PM in the library’s Community Room. All of our winning poets have been invited to read their work live at tomorrow’s […]

The West Des Moines Library is proud to announce the winners of our 2019 West Des Moines WRITES Poetry Contest! K-3: Alice Roos David Dehner Josh Salami 4-6: Ridge Rutherford Elizabeth Kummet Lila Mae Reum 7-8: Trinity Richer Shreya Joshi Uriel Rodriguez 9: Christina Arbs Reagan Mann Kaua’i Cua 10-12: Jake Henke Erin Baedke Morgan […]

West Des Moines WRITES:  A community poetry contest and reading The West Des Moines Library is hosting a community poetry contest culminating in a reading event to celebrate Poetry Month and National Library Week. We invite everyone to submit poetry entries to the library through February 28. Winners will be invited to share their work […]

It’s an age-old discussion among librarians: how to handle children who spend hours at the library without their parents or guardians. Many public library workers have a background in education/child care or have children of their own, and thus try their best to see to these children and their safety. But the public should know: […]