Here's a great article from today's edition of South End Patch about the Lego at the South End Library!

By Christopher Treacy | Email the author | 6:00am

Legos and the South End BPL 'Play Well' Together

The Lego Club meets every third Wednesday at 4pm for a little creative brainstorming

Some quick history: Ole Kirk Christiansen founded the Lego Company in 1934 as a wooden toy operation. In 1947 it began making plastic toys and two years later unveiled its now internationally celebrated line of colorful, interlocking pieces.

Here’s the real clincher--the company name is derived from the Danish phrase “leg godt,” which means "play well.” And at the South End BPL, every third Wednesday afternoon, that’s exactly what the Lego Club does.

Yesterday at 3pm the children’s room at the South End BPL was fairly quiet. But when I returned an hour later it was bustling with activity as over a dozen kids and a handful of doting mothers packed the low tables to get busy with Legos. Children’s librarian Margaret Gardner produced three oversized plastic tubs of them and the group was instantly off and running.

Liesl Trimnell’s son, Rocco Smith, 6, disappeared briefly to go retrieve his project – a space station – from the display window where Gardner encourages the kids to leave their more accomplished creations.

“This club at the South End library introduced Rocco to Legos and started what we’re calling ‘Lego fever.’ It’s been a little bit of a drain on mom and dad’s pocketbooks, but for the most part I think it’s a worthwhile investment,” Trimnell said.

“It’s inspiring to watch them, and because there’s a range of ages, you can see how the little kids learn from the bigger ones. The possibilities with Legos are infinite—only limited by their imaginations. And they’re perfectly made… so precise. There’s never any frustration that that the parts don’t do what they’re supposed to.”

Rachel Garity’s kids, Thomas, 8, and Victoria, 5, are both enthused about building with Legos. Thomas has turned it into a huge hobby—check out the video of the Lego car he and his dad built earlier in the week.

“Mary Rubin and I helped Margaret get this started,” Garity said. “We’d been to a Lego Club at the North End BPL and thought it would be great to bring it here. Someone from the Friends organization (City-Wide Friends of the Boston Public Library) donated a lot of these. Others were purchased with money they raised. The interactive play is a great experience for the kids.”

“We live in Brighton, so it’s nice that we can come to this even though we don’t live right here… especially since our branch is in danger of closing,” said Gail Monaghan.

Gardner summed it up nicely as she built a little Lego structure of her own: “We look forward to the togetherness and seeing the kids play with others they may not know or only see when they come here.”

“The South End is bigger than a block,” she added. “We celebrate our whole community and Lego Club is definitely a part of that.”