Page Two of Love Your Library
We live in iffy times, and if you have ever lived a day or two without electricity, you are probably aware that our grip on civilization’s comforts and conveniences is tenuous at best. If an asteroid collision wiped our electrical grids, or atomic warfare blew us back toward the Stone Age, the first place I would head (presuming my survival) would be to the library (presuming its survival), because there surely wouldn’t be any more click-and-find information for a very long time. And the books in that library could tell me just about anything I needed for survival in a damaged world: everything from which plants not to eat, to how to spin animal hair or vegetable fibers into thread, to how to construct a simple battery.
My local library is suffering from a lack of funding, and I doubt that it is alone in its woe. It doesn’t suffer from lack of books, but like an alarming number of our country’s libraries, it has outgrown its deteriorating building. In this economy, maintenance, as well as the possibility of expansion, are the first expenses to be reduced or cut from the budget.
In these hard economic times, it is terribly important to recognize the importance of our libraries. We need to protect and update and celebrate them as the treasures that they are. Few other community resources welcome the entire population, especially the children, all year ’round, every year.
I have vivid recall of our library in Redwood City, CA. My mother took us there every week, sending us to the children’s area while she browsed for a fresh read in the main section.
My mind’s eye can still see the face of the Children’s Librarian, although I have long since forgotten her name. She kept up with my reading level, suggesting writers and books that she thought I might enjoy, feeding my curiosity and interests.
I believe that curiosity is genetically programmed into every child. The first way a child explores the world is through direct, sensory experience. Later on, the mastery of spoken language (oh, those questions!) provides information, but ultimately, it is learning how to read that opens a child’s mind to the endless possibilities of a world of literature and science and history and human thought.
Our educators have made great advances in how best to teach reading, but just knowing how to read does not connote wanting to read. The best way to create that is to be sure a child has good role models, as in parents who themselves read. A child’s early teachers and a good public library and librarian will then be the only support an eager reader needs.
A child who loves to read may beg for just a few more minutes so that she can finish the chapter before lights-out. If you refuse her, she may well sneak a flashlight and her book under the covers. It’s a minor dilemma, but a parent must ultimately decide: do you punish the deception, or do you just wait a bit, and then quietly remove the flashlight and book from underneath the sleeping child?
I bet you can tell what my mother did!
National Library week is April 11-17, 2010
©2010 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com
