Sister Joan Pichette loves reading to children and has always delighted in bringing stories to life,  during her career as an elementary school teacher and later as a librarian at Grandville Avenue Neighborhood Library.

The seeds of Grandville Avenue Arts & Humanities (GAAH) were planted in the mid-1990s when the Roosevelt Park Neighborhood Association and Dominican Sisters-Grand Rapids joined forces. Their goal was to improve the lives of children in the Grandville Avenue (a.k.a. Roosevelt Park) neighborhood. It was 1996, when the Grandville Avenue Neighborhood Library opened at 1260 Grandville Avenue SW in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Joan Pichette, OP, was one of the earliest volunteers to help manage and staff the new library that would change the lives of many children and families in the Grandville Avenue Neighborhood of Grand Rapids. Sister Joan delighted in the children who visited the library and developed a love of books and learning.

In this video short, Sister Joan Pichette tells the story of one little boy and his first library card. https://vimeo.com/169109036

This is part of the oral history collected by Aquinas Saint Kateri Sullivan Golbiw at Aquinas College for SisterStory – the ongoing project to support and promote the development of NationalCatholicSistersWeek.org