On a Saturday afternoon in mid-October, the Idaho Falls Public Library will hand out brushes and paint and let Rapunzel preside over the easels. The event, simply called Painting with Rapunzel, runs from 2 to 4 p.m. on Oct. 17, 2026, and the invitation is deliberately loose: come any time during those two hours, stay as long as you like, and leave with a picture. There is no ticket to buy, no registration form to fill out, and no cap on how many people can walk through the door.
The library sits at 457 West Broadway in downtown Idaho Falls. It is a modern building, but the institution behind it is older than the town's incorporation by a comfortable margin, and its history is tangled up with the same impulse that puts a princess in a children's room on a Saturday: the idea that a public building should be a place where anyone can walk in and make something.
That story starts in 1898, when a group of women in Idaho Falls formed what they called the Village Improvement Society. The town was young and growing, and the society's members wanted it to be more than a railroad stop on the Snake River Plain. They planted trees, cleaned up public spaces, and pushed for a library. In 1913, the Carnegie Foundation gave the city $15,000 to build one, part of the wave of more than 1,600 Carnegie libraries that Andrew Carnegie's philanthropy scattered across the country between 1883 and 1929. Ground was broken in 1914, and the building opened in 1916 at the corner of Elm and Eastern Streets.
That Carnegie building served Idaho Falls for more than sixty years. It was designed by the firm Wayland & Fennell in a mix of Renaissance Revival and Art Deco styles, and it was expanded in the late 1930s. It stayed the city's library until 1977, when the collection moved a few blocks away to the current location on West Broadway. The old building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, and it later became part of the Museum of Idaho. So the library's first home is a museum, and its second home is where Rapunzel will be painting.
What the library does with that second home is the more relevant part. The Idaho Falls Public Library runs a steady calendar of free programming aimed at kids and families: coding classes for children on the second floor, a Fall Into Reading Challenge that asks kids ages 5 to 12 to read five nonfiction books and complete an activity for each one, game nights, storytimes, and a drive-thru window where parents can pick up holds or call ahead for same-day children's book selections. The library also lends out book club kits, runs a makerspace, and offers an audio recording room. None of it requires a membership beyond a library card, and much of it requires nothing at all.
Painting with Rapunzel fits that pattern exactly. It is a drop-in craft session with a costumed character, the kind of event that libraries put on because a children's librarian knows that a familiar storybook figure will get kids through the door, and that once they are through the door they will sit still with a brush in their hand for longer than anyone expected. The library has not published details about what the painting will depict or whether Rapunzel will be reading from the story of her famously long hair, only that attendees will paint a picture with her. For more information, the library asks people to send a message or call 208-612-8460.
There is something quietly funny about the pairing. Rapunzel is a character defined by being trapped in a tower, waiting for someone to find her. A public library is the opposite of a tower: it is a building whose entire purpose is to be entered by anyone, at no cost, without an appointment. Putting her in a room full of paint and children on a Saturday afternoon is a small act of reversal, and it is also just a good afternoon out.
The event is free and open to the public. Families can arrive at any point between 2 and 4 p.m. on Oct. 17, 2026, at the Idaho Falls Public Library, 457 West Broadway. Supplies and space are provided by the library, and no advance sign-up is required.