Remember the first book you checked out from the public library?
I do! I was in kindergarten. It was a Babar book—which title, I don’t recall; I wish I did!
What I do recall is that the font of that book simulated handwriting. And although I couldn’t read many words in any font, much less in script, I still remember how proud I felt walking down the library steps clutching that book, feeling very grownup.
More than the joy I felt carrying that book, I remember how grateful to my father I felt. And although I recall only one or so more times that he drove me to the library, that first time was memorable enough for an entire lifetime. I loved books, and I loved him for gifting me with choosing from a library-full of them!
(Ironically, when I was in high school, instead of walking home from the bus stop on cold and rainy days I waited—at the branch library!–for my father to stop as drove past the library on his way home from work.)
All of this reminiscence is to say that September is Library Card Sign-up Month, and I’d like to send a message to teachers and school librarians: please encourage parents to frequent the public library with their children. Not only so that the children can borrow books, but so that the children can associate reading with their parents’ love.
To parents, I implore: please, if at all possible, bring your children to the public library. Your children will associate your love for them with love of reading. Transferring the feeling of being loved to the love of reading is the best foundation you can give your children for a lifetime of learning.
To everyone I say: taking children to the public library isn’t an admission or intimation that the school library is inadequate. No. Each library has its role and purpose in a child’s education. Going to the public library with one’s parents is a different kind of experience from going to the school library with one’s teacher. It’s not a matter of school or/instead of the public library, but the school and the public library.
No matter how many different sorts of cards a grownup carries in a purse or wallet, none provides as many endless possibilities for parent-child bonding and a lifetime of shared and independent learning as does a public library card. If you don’t have one, please!, now is the time to get one!
And whether you are a school or public librarian, parent of school-aged children, or teachers and administrators, why not ask and arrange for a public librarian to have a library card sign-up table in full sight at each back-to-school night, as a gift to the children and a courtesy for their parents?
p.s. When I think about the timing of my first public library visit with my father, I’m thinking that it was September, and my kindergarten teacher likely recommended the visit. ..Oh, and did I mention? …When I grew up, I became a school librarian.
Do you have favorite library visit memories, either as a child yourself, or as an adult, with children?
cbhanek 