Checking Out Materials
Application forms, library cards and check-out records are all in the child's name. 
On the day you fill out a Library Application form, you may check out two items.
You will receive your Library Card the next time you visit the Library.
Once you have your Library Card, you my check out up to five items.

Items are checked out for three weeks. The Library does not charge fees for overdue books, but if items are lost or damaged beyond repair, there is a replacement fee of $2.00.  


ABOUT ME
My name is Arthiss Kliever, but everyone at the Library calls me Mrs. K.  I was born, raised, educated and married in El Paso, TX.  My husband, the late Dr. Lonnie Kliever, was a university professor. We moved to Dallas in 1974, when he began teaching at Southern Methodist University. I have lived in the Lake Highlands area of Dallas ever since.

I have two daughters -- Launa, who is now an Administrative Social Worker living and working in New York City, and Marney, who is married and has one son, Kai, my only grandchild. They moved recently from Hawaii to Dallas, and are temporarily living with me while they decide where to settle permanently.

I have a degree in Music Education, and taught classroom music for two years in the 1980s.  For most of the next decade, I worked at the Fondren Library at SMU, and also volunteered in the Dallas Public Library system.  Through the years I have  pursued several other avocations as well: woodcut printmaking, computer graphics programming, Girl Scout and PTA leadership, composing and arranging (handbell music!), board game inventing, and various other arts and crafts.  I have always enjoyed children and children's literature.


HOW THE LIBRARY GOT STARTED
It was the early '90s.  Launa started teaching, and Marney was settled in college.  I began helping Launa develop a large classroom library, and volunteered to assist her third-grade class in their "library time." Two years later, Launa left the teaching profession and moved away from Dallas. She said she didn't want the books, but thinking she might change her mind, I packed them away, and forgot all about them. 

Fast-forward several years... 

I was cleaning out closets one day and came across the boxes marked "Launa's Library."  I decided to donate them all to some charity, but when sorting through them, I started wondering if I couldn't do something special with the books myself. My thought was to re-organize the books and somehow share them with children that would benefit from them. It was my husband who encouraged me to set up a little children's library in our own home for the pleasure and benefit of the children in our immediate neighborhood.

We cleared out a storage room upstairs (Launa's former bedroom, actually), added skylights and new air-conditioning, painted, carpeted, built cubbies and shelving for the books, had friends and family scouring thrift stores and garage sales to fill out the collection, and several months later, in the fall of 2001, not knowing what to expect, we opened the library.  Twenty-five folks showed up at our Grand Opening.  Launa's Little Library was a reality!

Little did I realize, with those small numbers and my modest expectations, that the library would grow into such a dynamic presence in the community! It has become a wonderfully magical place for hundreds of children, and enormously gratifying and fulfilling for me. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to everyone who has supported and loved Launa's Little Libary over the years!