By Elizabeth Wastell, Gazette staff
This is the last article in our series featuring local librarians. In this final in the series we are meeting with Stephanie Ode. Ode is 65 years old and was born in Brookings, South Dakota. She graduated from SDSU with a Bachelor of Science in Commercial Economics. Ode has 4 grandchildren and 3 grown children with her husband Bruce.
"I became a stay a home mom when my third child was born," she said, "Then I started volunteering at their school library. That got me started in the library business."
Once she got a taste for working at the library, she discovered that she quite enjoyed it.
"I worked at Joe Foss School in the daycare later and love working with children," she said, "That was great background experience for me. I started working at the Oak View branch library in 2005. I retired this past September, and then the Brandon librarian asked if I would ever consider working part time. And the answer was YES. So now I am fill in as needed wherever, including the Garretson library. Right now, I am doing the Thursday morning Storytimes at Garretson and love meeting the families."
Ode has some favorite types of genres.
"I like reading historical fiction and historical non-fiction books," she said, "I seem to always learn something new about history. One of my favorite authors is Kate Quinn."
From the start, Ode has always loved working with children.
"I enjoy working with children and showing them the library,” she said. “The parents learn too, we even have games and toys to check out. I always try to stay busy, even if that means dusting the shelves. The most challenging part is trying to find that certain book to get reluctant readers back to reading. I want the customer to love it as much as I do. Also finding addresses for people. It not as easy as it used to be. I have done many story times over the years. It is always amazing how young the children can be and pronounce those dinosaur names! I used to do a large daycare story time and I would use the parachute. I would have the teacher hold onto it and the children go under. Then we would have all the children hold on to the parachute and the teachers go under. The kids love that. In my retirement, I, of course work some at the library. I also get to all the grandkids’ games and programs."
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