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| This library, though very similar to the one I remember, is larger than my hometown library of the 1950s. |
Without one particular librarian, a woman who seemed very old to me when I was ten or eleven and she handed me the first library card that had my name on it, I probably would not be the avid reader that I am today. From that day until the day that I outgrew bicycles and got a driver's license, I biked the six-mile-roundtrip every Saturday to exchange the books I'd read that week for a new batch. As I picture that library now, I realize that my personal library is about two-thirds the size of the library's collection in those days. All of the books were crammed into one room, and there were only three large bookcases in all; two with adult book (perhaps 1500 in total) and one dedicated to children's books (approximately 800 more books).
More than half of the books on the children's shelves were already below my reading level when I discovered the library, and in the next eighteen months or so I pretty much finished all the young adult fiction the library had. But after finding out how little money my hometown allotted to new-book purchases for the library, my visits necessarily became farther and farther apart. Then one day, the elderly librarian asked me where I had been, and why she hadn't been seeing me every Saturday as in the past. After I explained my predicament to her, she made me a deal. She gave me open access to the adult section - though she did every so often refuse to let me check out one or two of my choices - as long as I didn't tell my friends and teachers about our deal. The secret was an easy one to keep because only my best friends even suspected that I read as much as I did back then - there was no better way for a boy of the 1950s to ruin his reputation with his peers than to become marked as a book-nerd. Believe me.
I do believe to this day that I would not be the reader I am today if it were not for my discovery in 1958 or 1959 of a library I could get to on my own two wheels. And, more importantly, if not for that elderly (in my memory, at least) librarian who opened my eyes to a world I never suspected existed. She ignited my curiosity about the world and the people who lived in places I hoped to see one day, a curiosity that would lead me to years living and working in several different countries, and to the lifelong friends I made during those years, people I still keep in touch with thanks to twenty-first-century technology.
My only regret is that I don't remember ever expressing any of this to the lady herself. I hope she realized just how much I appreciated her - I just wish I had said so while I had the chance.
My dad used to take me to the library when I was little. I remember getting my first card and how grown up I felt, and how fun it was to check out a bag of books. I still go to the library every three weeks, like clockwork. (Because I can't afford to buy all the books I want to read!) Libraries are the best. :)
ReplyDeleteStories like ours make me wonders how many people have had their lives positively changed by having access to a public library. I look around my own library and see a whole lot more activity there than I remember seeing twenty or thirty years ago. Libraries have done a remarkable job in keeping up with, and using, technology to connect with young people.
DeleteMy mom read Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman when I was about 3. She also took me and my brother to the library all the time from the time we were little until we were old enough to go ourselves. I owe my love of books to her and my dad. She wasn't a reader herself other than reading the Bible every day, but my dad read all the time until he passed away.
ReplyDeleteYou were very lucky to have parents who were aware of how important it is to expose their children to books and reading - even if like in the case of your mother, they themselves are not heavy readers. I do believe that people are born with a tendency to read or not to read, but experiencing positive feedback about readers when very young is one of the keys in creating lifelong readers. Learning early on that reading is FUN can go a long way in a kid's life.
DeleteMy mother took us to the library weekly. I began going to the adult section when I was eleven. No one questioned me, and the books I chose were usually about history--Greek, Roman, Egyptian with lots of photographs. It satisfied my father's demand that I read more than Nancy Drew, and I fell in love with history. I began reading my mother's books at the same time. She belonged to the Doubleday Book Club to supplement her library books. I'm grateful to both my parents and librarians everywhere for my love of reading which has sustained me through the decades.
ReplyDeleteI belonged to a couple of those old book clubs, too, Jen, and couldn't wait for the mailman to show up with my selection of the month...and earning bonus points and extra books was something that exposed me to a lot of books I probably would never have otherwise even heard of. Those clubs were great back in the day.
DeleteI believe that parents do their kids a huge favor by making books available to them as soon as they can pick them up - but some kids never do turn into readers even with that head-start available to them. And more girls become young readers than boys, etc. I wish I could figure out how to get young males to read more - and become lifelong readers. As a male blogger, I know just how rare male book bloggers are, and I find that kind of sad.
I have four children, 2 are readers (boy and girl), 2 are not (boy and girl) despite weekly library visits, overstuffed shelves at home, and years of bed time stories for all of them. My husband isn’t a reader either so I have to wonder if genetics plays a small part.
DeleteI absolutely believe that people are born as natural readers or not. My brother is not a reader, and I'm a fanatic reader. Neither of my two daughters read much for pleasure - but their jobs require that they do a lot of reading, so that might be part of the deal with them. Neither of my parents were readers - unless you count all those old movie magazines of the fifties that my mother used to read so avidly. And we never had a lot of books in the house when I was a kid because we simply could not afford them. You just never know.
DeleteI had a disabled brother who was housebound and to keep him from going nuts my mother went to the library for him every week. I took to going with her from about the age of four, got my own card and started on Enid Blyton's 'Noddy' books. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven especially when I moved on to Blyton's adventure stories for older children. I was an 'addict'. Strangely, my brother read for a few years and then gave up, never to return to reading... it was me who became the reader. My father did not live with us but I know I got it from him, my mother was not much of a reader just like my brother. In my family we're all readers, apart from my grandson, who physically reads beautifully but does not like books. He's with us a lot in school holidays so I insist on a reading hour. At the moment I have him reading Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror by Chris Priestly which are brilliant and Scott actually likes the book. There are three in the series, this one, a sea based one and a railway one. They're creepy in the manner of M.R. James, always with a macabre twist at the end. I'm not under any illusion that I've found his 'thing' bookwise but I reckon if I keep plugging away he might in the end read occasionally as an adult.
ReplyDeleteSorry to be so long-winded but you write such interesting posts and I always have something to say about them. LOL
I love "long-winded" comments, so keep them coming. :-)
DeleteI have come to believe that the reading-bug is part of our DNA, and that environment has a lot less to do about creating readers than we would like to believe. I think that fewer men read for pleasure because of all the peer pressure they received as kids and teens not to read. I know that I hid my reading habit from kids and friends well into my high school years - before I decided that the problem was with them and not with me.
I still remember very well the children's librarian who helped me find books, and my mother's weekly trips with us to the library. I remember the exact layout of that library and how thrilled I was when my mom gave me permission to freely browse the adult stacks (I think I was in middle school) but I often felt like I was being sneaky doing so- that I'd get in trouble or something for checking out adult fiction! (Mostly I was reading nonfiction about animal behavior, though). My library wasn't small enough that I could actually have read all the books on the shelf labeled for my age group but one day I defended my choice of books I'd already borrowed many times (my mother wanted to see me reading new material) by saying something like "but I've read everything else here!" and being promptly chastised for making such a grand claim. Ha ha.
ReplyDeleteIt was worth a shot, though, so I hope you got at least a little credit for your claim. :-)
DeleteI'm not surprised that your library memories are so clear and precise, either. Most avid readers I've talked with have similar memories - and they can clearly remember the layout of their childhood library even five or six decades later. It's an experience that readers seem to share - and love to discuss.
What a great librarian you had! I was also raised in a small town with a very small library. If I couldn't convince my mom to drive me to it, I walked - about a mile both ways. Nothing could stop me from getting books! When I got my driver's license, one of the first things I did was drive to a bigger town nearby to check out its library. It was two stories high and seemed like pure heaven after our dinky little town library! I'm spoiled now to live near two well-stocked libraries, one city, one county, so I'm able to get just about any book I want. I LOVE libraries!
ReplyDeleteMe, too. Absolutely love them.
DeleteI'm in a similar situation. I have access to the city of Houston's library and access to the Harris County system. The county system is so good that I hardly ever use the city system, but it's nice to know that it's there when I need it.
Thank for sharing your memories.