A new face from a familiar Kingfisher County family has been hired as youth services librarian at Kingfisher Memorial Library.

Dyamonique McCarty moved to the county three years ago from Dallas with her husband, Rodney Mc-Carty, the grandson of Anna Caldwell and the late Marion Caldwell of Dover.

“We moved first to Dover to help with my husband’s family farm and then we moved to Kingfisher in February,” she said.

McCarty said she loves living in Kingfisher, but also enjoyed the rural life in Dover, both of which are much different from her metropolitan roots.

“I said yes blindly to moving to the country the first time, with no idea what to expect,” she said. “But if the opportunity to move back to the country comes around again, I know I will still say yes, based on my first experience.”

In Texas, McCarty worked as a certified nursing assistant at a senior care facility and then earned an associate’s degree in general studies at Redlands Community College after moving to Oklahoma.

She worked as a preschool teacher’s aide at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School before accepting the library position.

“I’ve gone from caring for the elderly to taking care of children, one end of the age spectrum to the other,” she said.

McCarty said raising her three children, R.J., 7, Rylee, 4, and Ramiyah, 4 months, has rekindled her love for reading, particularly children’s books.

“My kids love to read and come home from school talking about this character or that story that I wasn’t familiar with, so I’ve been doing a lot of catching up,” she said.

McCarty is busy making plans for Kingfisher’s popular summer reading program, with the theme “A Universe of Stories.”

“I expect to have a schedule ready sometime in April, so parents can start making plans,” she said.

Meanwhile, she’ll be taking over the story hour program from Joann Turner, interim youth services librarian, who has moved to the librarian position recently vacated by the retirement of Rena Tollison.

And McCarty has an idea or two for new youth programming, including clubs to get more teenagers to participate.

She’s also preparing to engage the whole community – young and old – in celebrating National Library Week, by encouraging readers to take and post “Bookface” selfies – holding up their favorite book and making a face they think represents the story.

“I have a lot of ideas I’m working on and I look forward to meeting all of our patrons,” she said.