WESTBOROUGH – From the “Frozen” character Olaf to bingo, there was a lot to enjoy as the Westborough Public Library recently celebrated its first in-person event since the latest case surge in the COVID-19 pandemic began.
The event, called Frozen Flamingo Wingo BINGO, was held on Feb. 23 at the library.
“It’s our first post-pandemic event, and we wanted to make a big splash,” Assistant Library Director Lynne Soukup told the Community Advocate. “We wanted to welcome our families back, especially during school vacation week.”
The bingo event, she said, was a perfect opportunity, indeed taking place during February vacation for local students.
Seventy-eight people signed up to play bingo. Soukup said the library team was “psyched” to have those people back in the library.
Teen Librarian Jen McGrath, who Soukup called a “master of ceremonies,” led the bingo games with the help of teen volunteers from her Westborough Awesome Volunteer Experts (WAVE) group.
The kids played bingo, crossing out the names of cartoon characters that McGrath projected on the screen. In addition to bingo, they got extra prizes for singing Disney songs like the hit “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from the movie “Encanto.”
Soukup said library staff proposed a number of ideas for an event. They considered holding it with a snow theme outside. But, then, the weather turned cold.
The library wanted to hold an event as COVID-19 cases were trending down and soon as the Westborough Board of Health said that people could begin to remove their masks while indoors.
“So, Flamingo Wingo BINGO was born,” Soukup said.
They added in the Frozen-theme because they had previously scheduled to have the Olaf character make an appearance for a Noon Year’s Eve event. That had to be canceled, though, due to the pandemic.
“It’s been heartbreaking to start planning things and then have to cancel, and plan and cancel,” Soukup said.
As those cancellations have been hard, it makes everyone happy to be back, Soukup said. This event was filled within two days, and the library even had a waitlist for it.
“We’re back,” Soukup said. “We’re back in business. In-person events are back at the library. You can see that people want it.”
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