Library Foundation of Los Angeles - Events - Stay Home and Read a Book Ball

Gregory Peck Reading Series

Stay Home & Read a Book Ball

Awards Dinner

Major Donor Event

Illustration from June 4, 1921 issue of The Record

About the top photo: This dramatic illustration accompanied an impassioned editorial in the June 4, 1921 issue of The Record urging a "yes" vote on the $2,500,000 library bond measure before the public. The full illustration includes text imploring "Los Angeles! YOU NEED A LIBRARY."

Sir Sidney Poitier

Sir Sidney Poitier
2007 Chair

Each year, the Library Foundation launches one of its most popular fund-raising campaigns, the Stay Home and Read a Book Ball. Instead of asking everyone to get dressed up and go to a fancy event, we invite them to stay home, curl up some place comfortable, and read their favorite book.

This annual non-event provides funding for Library cultural and educational outreach programs.

As a result, we've had the opportunity to experience first-hand the works and words of Nobel Prize-winning poets, Pulitzer Prize-winning historians and journalists, Grammy-winning musicians, scientists, philosophers, and storytellers -- not to mention food critics, mystery writers, film directors, dancers, and choreographers.

If you'd like to receive an invitation to the next Stay Home and Read and Book Ball, please contact us at (213) 228-7500 or by email.

The Stay Home and Read a Book Ball was first initiated in 1988 by the Los Angeles Library Association. The Library Foundation was created in 1992 to seek private sector support for programs and services of the Los Angeles Public Library.

The Wilshire Branch's first location, when it opened December 6, 1920, was in a tiny storefront building on Second and Hobart Streets, across from the Cahuenga School. It was the smallest building ever occupied by any of the city's branch libraries - a 12 by 24 foot space, length unbroken by doors or windows, with shelf space for only 1000 books.

A scant 900 books started the branch's collection, with loans from the Central Library "saving" Wilshire from collapse when a demanding, book-loving public checked out all the branch's volumes within the first week of opening.


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