Posted on 04 October 2021 by Gillian.
The #MHPLforYXH campaign has a new sponsor!
Before we introduce Sara and her business, we'd like to take a minute to thank our previous sponsor, Real Estate Collective. Elizabeth McNally and the team at Real Estate Collective, Medicine Hat's newest boutique real estate brokerage, donated $6,500 which translated into 1,300 FREE cards for Hatters! Thank you so much to the REC team for supporting your library!
On the heels of that donation, another great library supporter has stepped up and contributed $1,200 which equals 240 FREE library cards! This donation is from local baker extraordinaire, Sara Zacharias of The Sweetness Bakeshop.
Sara is a wife and mother who is busy baking all hours of the day and homeschooling her daughter. She's also an avid... and we mean AVID reader. She reads approximately 150 books per year!
When we asked her why she chose to support MHPL with this generous donation she said, "because literacy is so important to being able to understand other people; books are a window to society." And she's right, reading literary fiction has been proven to boost empathy and improves the reader's capacity to understand what others are thinking and feeling.[1] She also uses the Library as a resource for her daughter who is being homeschooled. They visit regularly to get new materials for education and entertainment.
So, which books does this avid reader recommend? The Daughter of Smoke & Bone series is what got Sara back into reading about four years ago. She said she loved the books because of how they mirrored some of the problems in society today. Sara described the book by saying, "the two main characters are from different worlds and had so much hatred for each other... but they couldn't even remember how their rivalry began." I feel like this book might teach us all a little something in this extremely divisive time we're living in.
As for the cookbooks that she recommends, Sara loves the following:
- Perfectly Golden: Adaptable Recipes for Sweet and Simple Treats by Angela Garbacz
- Bon Appétit Desserts: The Cookbook for All Things Sweet and Wonderful by Barbara Fairchild
- Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor by Peter Reinhart
- Magnolia Kitchen: Inspired Baking With Personality by Bernadette Gee
And what is Sara currently reading? She's on the second book of The Bone Season series. She loves a book with a little bit of magic!
Now that you know more about Sara, I bet you're wondering how you could possibly repay her for your FREE library card and her support of our library. That's easy: Eat her dessert! Order something through her website, or take a trip to MadHatter Coffee Roastery and grab one of the sweet treats that she bakes for them.
Visit the Library to get your FREE card or renew it online here.
[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/novel-finding-reading-literary-fiction-improves-empathy/