Embedded Files
Route 66: The First 100 Years
Wednesday, July 15th, 4:00 p.m.
McNabb Branch
This PBS centennial documentary celebrates Route 66 through Oklahoma, home to more surviving miles of the Mother Road than any other state, tracing the landmarks, neon signs, and stories that made the highway a symbol of American freedom and adventure.
One Giant Leap
Thursday, July 16th, 11:00 a.m.
Granville Branch
Celebrate the anniversary of the 1969 Moon Landing with a morning of stories, art, and science, featuring a reading of Max Goes to the Moon, a Moon Masterpiece craft, and a NASA-inspired activity demonstrating how lunar craters are formed. All materials provided.
Chicago Time Machine
Thursday, July 16th, 3:00 p.m.
Condit Branch
WTTW host Geoffrey Baer peels back 14,000 years of Chicago history in Chicago Time Machine — from prehistoric giant beavers in Wicker Park to a WWII aircraft plant that now makes Tootsie Rolls, uncovering stories stranger than fiction at every turn.
One Giant Leap
Thursday, July 16th, 4:30 p.m.
Condit Branch
Celebrate the anniversary of the 1969 Moon Landing with a morning of stories, art, and science, featuring a reading of Max Goes to the Moon, a Moon Masterpiece craft, and a NASA-inspired activity demonstrating how lunar craters are formed. All materials provided.
Change, Not Charity
Tuesday, July 21st, 1:00 p.m.
Granville Branch
This documentary tells the emotional, decades-long story of the fight for disability rights — through the voices of the determined men and women who put their bodies on the line to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, one of the great civil rights achievements in American history.
Chapter 250 Book Club (Adult)
Tuesday, July 21st, 5:00 p.m.
Granville Branch
A hybrid book club featuring a preview screening from Ken Burns' The American Revolution and a discussion of Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers — six compelling episodes from the fragile decade after independence, from the Hamilton-Burr duel to Franklin's challenge to Congress on slavery.
1964: The Fight for a Right
Wednesday, July 22nd, 5:00 p.m.
McNabb Branch
This PBS documentary recounts Freedom Summer — the daring 1964 voter registration campaign that sent hundreds of volunteers into Mississippi, turned the nation's attention to legalized injustice across the South, and permanently changed America.
Misty
Thursday, July 23rd, 3:00 p.m.
Condit Branch
Set on Virginia's Chincoteague Island, this heartwarming adaptation of Marguerite Henry's Misty of Chincoteague follows siblings Paul and Maureen on their quest to catch the legendary Phantom, screened in celebration of the annual Pony Swim, with a take-home wooden horse craft to make while you watch.
From Rails to Trails
Thursday, July 23rd, 5:00 p.m.
Condit Branch
This PBS documentary traces the 60-year struggle behind America's 26,000 miles of rail-trails — from small-town showdowns to Supreme Court cases — and the community activists and visionary leaders who transformed defunct railways into vibrant public spaces.
American Revolution
Tuesday, July 28th, 1:00 p.m.
Granville Branch
Historian Lucy Worsley investigates the tensions and turning points behind America's break from Britain — traveling from New York to London to Paris to ask whether the Revolutionary War was truly inevitable, and uncovering the radical ideas, secret missions, and mounting pressures on both sides that made it so.
Meet Misty
Wednesday, July 29th, 4:00 p.m.
McNabb Branch
Celebrate the annual Chincoteague Pony Swim with a reading of Misty, the Wonder Pony and a hands-on craft — paint a wooden horse cutout and add a yarn mane to take home.
Chapter 250 Book Club (Teen)
Wednesday, July 29th, 5:00 p.m.
McNabb Branch
A hybrid book club featuring a preview screening from Ken Burns' The American Revolution and a discussion of M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing — a National Book Award winner following a young Black man who discovers he is the subject of a cruel experiment as revolution brews around him.
Cars
Thursday, July 30th, 11:00 a.m.
Granville Branch
In honor of Route 66's 100th anniversary and Granville Cruise Night, join us for a screening of the heartwarming story of hotshot racer Lightning McQueen, whose unexpected detour to a sleepy Route 66 town teaches him what really matters.
Chapter 250 Book Club (Youth)
Thursday, July 30th, 5:00 p.m.
Condit Branch
A book club featuring a screening from Ken Burns' The American Revolution and a discussion of Answering the Cry for Freedom, highlighting remarkable African Americans, who waged their own fight for freedom as the Revolution unfolded around them.
Funky Foods of the 1970s
Tuesday, August 4th, 6:00 p.m.
Granville Branch/Virtual
Join author and librarian Amy Alessio for a fun, flavorful dive into the food trends of the 1970s — from Green Goddess dressing to Watergate cake — and discover how politics, pop culture, and Jell-O molds shaped American cuisine in ways that still linger today.
Iconic America - Fenway Park
Wednesday, August 5th, 5:00 p.m.
McNabb Branch
In this episode of Iconic America, David Rubenstein explores how Fenway Park and the Boston Red Sox reveal the deeper threads of community, identity, and resilience woven into baseball, and into America itself.
Woodstock
Tuesday, August 11th, 1:00 p.m.
Granville Branch
Through interviews with performers, organizers, and historians, this documentary explores how Woodstock's singular mix of music and idealism gave youth a voice and permanently shaped both the music industry and the social movements that followed.
Grassroots Democracy
Tuesday, August 11th, 6:00 p.m.
Granville Branch/Virtual
Historian Mike Matejka traces the stories of Illinois workers — from the Ottawa Radium Girls to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — who organized across ethnic, racial, and gender lines to build unions, secure rights, and shape American democracy from the ground up.
Preserving Illinois Prairie
Wednesday, August 12th, 5:00 p.m.
McNabb Branch
This documentary traces Illinois's prairies from their glacial origins 8,000 years ago through the near-total loss of 22 million acres by 1900, examining what remains and what is being done to preserve it.
A More Perfect Union
Thursday, August 13th, 4:00 p.m.
Condit Branch
This documentary chronicles how George Washington and the founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to debate, disagree, and ultimately compromise their way to the United States Constitution, a document that has shaped American government for nearly 250 years.
America's Founding: Live Virtual Tour
Tuesday, August 18th, 3:00 p.m.
Granville Branch/Virtual
Celebrate America's 250th anniversary with a virtual live tour of the National Constitution Center's immersive exhibit, where rare artifacts and interactive experiences bring the debates, struggles, and ideals of the founding era to life.
Chapter 250 Book Club (Adult)
Chapter 250 Book Club (Teens)
Wednesday, August 26th, 5:00 p.m.
McNabb Branch/Virtual
Explore what it means to be American through a screening of the PBS documentary Hamilton's America, followed by a group discussion and exploration of L.M. Elliott's Hamilton and Peggy! A Revolutionary Friendship, a richly detailed tale of the overlooked Schuyler sister and her unlikely friendship with Alexander Hamilton.
Chapter 250 Book Club (Youth)
Thursday, August 27th, 5:00 p.m.
Condit Branch/Virtual
Explore what it means to be American through a walkthrough of the U.S. Constitution with Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center, followed by a group discussion and exploration of Khizr Khan's This Is Our Constitution — a personal journey through America's founding document as a living promise of democratic values.
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