Libraries

Booking through Thursday today is asking about early library memories, specifically asking these questions:

What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

I remember lots of trips to puppet shows and story times in the special event room at the library. I even remember the way our library smelled. I loved that smell as a kid. I can’t even begin to describe the smell, but only the library had that smell, and I associated it with good books and fun puppet shows. I can’t remember anything about the puppet shows, but just that I looked forward to the times my mom or dad would take us.

I also remember how much I liked going to the library even when there wasn’t a puppet show or special event going on. I loved finding new books to read, and many that I checked out from that library are still old favorites. I also remember the little circular step down sitting area with the green shag carpet (they remodeled during the 80's, but I was an early elementary child during the late 70's, lime green shag carpeting was everywhere) where we would sit and look at books and the Sesame Street magazines we could only read there at the library, not take home. I even remember doing research projects in the library. This was before everyone had a computer. You had to actually go to the library and look through the card catalogue, actual index cards in drawers, mind you, and go open up the encyclopedia to do research. There is still something satisfying to me to sit at a table spread with papers and books and flip through the pages to find what I’m looking for, though, the Internet has made research much faster. I feel a little sorry for my kids, however, that they probably won’t have that satisfying spread out the books and papers experience.

When I had the chicken pox in fourth grade, I remember my mom checking out some books for me to read. The only one I really remember was James and the Giant Peach, and that was extremely surreal to read while slightly delirious anyhow from the fever and all, but I’ve always associated the library with that memory for some reason. Probably because I was a little worried that by reading the books while infected with the chicken pox I hoped I wouldn’t be passing it along to whoever next read that book.

As I got older, I was allowed to ride my bike by myself to the library, since it wasn’t very far at all from our neighborhood. I can’t imagine allowing my boys to do that nowadays, and not just because it’s really too far and too dangerous for them to ride over the bridge to our library, but more because we live in a different time, sadly. But that’s another post.

The one summer I stayed in Gainesville at UF and did the required summer semester, my roommate, Heather, and I visited the public library and got cards there. We enjoyed having a little more free time to read a few novels, which the heavier load of fall and spring semesters didn’t allow. I liked that library, too. It was always so cool and airy on a hot Gainesville day, and summer in Gainesville is most definitely hot, and I would even study there sometimes, rather than studying in the stuffy campus libraries. I remember it had a good smell, too, better than the dorms, at any rate. Can you tell I associate memories with smells? That downtown library is also the one I raced to one Saturday evening a few years later, after marrying Drew and quitting graduate school, when I just had to read the next book in a series I was reading through and the branch closer to our house didn’t have it. I had called the downtown branch an hour before closing time to see if they had it, and then raced over there to check it out because I just couldn’t wait until Monday.

When we lived in Indiana a few years ago, I loved our library because it was right on the Ohio River. I would take the boys and walk along the river and let them look at the “bar-edges” (barges) and then we’d go check out books. We all loved it, especially on glorious fall days (my absolutely favorite time of year), and the boys had their first experience with the summer reading program then, even though they were just little.

These days, I’ve really enjoyed letting the boys participate in our library’s summer reading program. The first summer we were here, the theme was the Gold Rush, and the boys got to pan for gold in a wading pool in front of the library and have beans and corn bread and lots of fun stories. Another year the theme was medieval times, and they had some really fun activities that year, too, including a demonstration by a group of medieval re-enactors in heraldry and sword fighting. Very cool.

Now that Boo is getting bigger, but not quite big enough for the library, it’s been a little challenging. When the boys are with me, I usually send them to the children’s section and then head to the grown-up books with Boo in her stroller. I have to have a plan in mind, because if I try to browse titles, Boo’s quick little hands get busy pulling books off the shelf and she quickly grows bored and starts wailing. Loudly. Something about the library brings out the banshee side of her. Hopefully she’ll grow to love the library as much as the rest of us do. Until then, I go with book list in hand and aim for the proper aisle like a book-seeking missile and snatch and grab in record time with little time to browse.

Well, I went on and on and overdid the answer to those questions. I don’t seem to be able to write short blog posts. See what other people have shared about their library memories over at Booking Through Thursday.

HT: 5 Minutes for Books