My Love Affair with the Library

In elementary school, our bus drivers each picked up two sets of kids. We referred to ourselves as "first load" and "second load." If you were on "first load" you got to school about half an hour (or more, perhaps, I can't quite remember) before the "second load" kids; at the end of the day, though, you got to leave half and hour earlier. I was on "first load." In the morning down time while waiting for the other half of the class to arrive, we were allowed to go to the library if we wished. I don't really remember many other kids being in the library in those early mornings, so in retrospect I wonder if everyone was allowed this right, or whether the teachers picked and chose, or we got special passes if we asked, or what.

Suffice it to say that nearly every morning, I was in the library. We were only allowed to check out two books at once, and I was an avid enough reader that I often finished those two books in one day and needed new ones the next day. Depending on how long they were, sometimes two books would last me two days. I kept the books in my desk, and I read when I was finished with worksheets that other kids were still completing. I read on the bus on the way home. I read as I walked slowly from the bus stop to the house. I paused briefly for my snack (house rule: no books at the table), and then I carried myself off to my room to stretch out on the floor and read. I remember lying on my side, my head propped on my hand, and reading until my arm fell asleep; then flipping over to lie on the other side, and prop my head on that hand until the tingle told me it was time to switch sides again. I would take a reading break for dinner. And then, more often than not, I would hunker down under the covers at night with my pillow shading the light from my bed lamp (a cunning device that hooked onto the headboard and shone right onto the book), and I would read until my eyelids were so heavy that I couldn't keep them open any longer. Or until I finished the book. Whichever came first.

The time period I'm talking about involved the reading of such books as James and the Giant Peach and The Boxcar Children and Where the Red Fern Grows -- chapter books that ranged around 150-200 pages. This would have been about third through sixth grades. Always seeking the magic of a good story, wherever I could find it, I read quickly, devouring plots, desperate to know what would happen next. So there I was, bespectacled, quiet, a good girl who always wore skirts and dresses (our mother didn't allow us to wear blue jeans to school; pants were acceptable, but only preferred when it was cold out) soaking in the quiet of the library nearly every morning, and looking for new books.

I remember vividly the glee I felt when I discovered the phenomenon of The Good Shelves in the library. If you set me down in K-- Elementary School today, I guarantee you that I could not only find my way to the library, I could lead you directly to that set of shelving (assuming the place isn't completely rearranged) and point out The Good Shelves for your edification. There were two particularly Good Spots, I discovered through much reading. At the time, I felt like I had unearthed a great secret -- that the library shelved all its best books together, on shelves that looked just like every other, but fundamentally were not "just like" because nearly every book on them was particularly splendid. It is only now, with the hindsight of adulthood, that I realize why these shelves were so good: it was neither a secret, nor magic, but the simple fact of the dewey decimal system and alphabetical order that grouped all the Good Books together; most of them, you see, were written by the same author.

Now, I was not stupid. It was obvious that the same person wrote all of the Beezus and Romona books; they were filled with all of the same characters. But that E. Nesbit, she was a wily one. Her turn-of-the-twentieth-century storytelling held me in thrall from page one, and while she wrote nearly 40 books for children, only a few featured the same characters. So it is not completely surprising that my nine-year-old self found it almost magical that having discovered one wonderful book in The Story of the Treasure Seekers, all I had to do was go back to that book's general vicinity on the shelves to find many many more that were equally captivating.

In the summer, when my insatiable reading habit could not meet with the endless supply of books from the school library, our mother got us public library cards and took us there. I remember reading the whole Little House on the Prairie series. My taste for mysteries started with The Bobbsey Twins, moved on to Nancy Drew, cut teeth with Trixie Beldon, and then graduated to Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators. If I wasn't doing homework or chores, and I was at home, then you would find me reading.

I suppose it is not surprising that a child who read this much would grow up to be an English professor. But let me let you in on a sad, little secret: I hardly read anything anymore.

Let me qualify that statement a little. I read countless student papers and give them comments to help them improve (I hope) their own research and writing skills. I read Victorian novels, poetry, nineteenth-century essays, and recent scholarly articles in preparation for teaching. I read all of the above and more for the articles and books that I am working on writing myself.

But don't ask me to tell you what is currently on the New York Times bestseller list. In the summer, I tend to carve out a few hunks of time to read for pleasure. And when I do that, I read just as I did when I was a child -- in heart-and-soul efforts that tune out everything else in the world and barrel through hundreds of pages in a day or two. Amy Tan, Julia Alvarez, Marilynne Robinson, Margaret Atwood, these are the modern writers I like. This summer, I've devoured several books of non-fiction that I found fascinating. And when I say I "can't put something down," I mean that I stay up till 2am and read all 300 pages in one sitting.

Yet I have found, contrary to what I would have assumed when I started out, that making a career of reading and writing means that I very rarely read anything that I don't have to read for some reason. Because I have to read so much, when I'm done with that work, I don't often feel like reading as a way to unwind.

However. I read several books each day to my children. And I take them to the library a few times a month. Daughter, at 2 and a half, already knows her way around the children's section, which covers an entire floor. Son chooses themes for each week's visit, so that we get cowboy books this week, dinosaurs the next. He is learning how to ask the librarian for what he wants. It is my fond hope that the two of them, growing up in the library like this, surrounded by books in our own home, will grow to love language as much as I do, to fall hook line and sinker for a well-told story, to marvel at poetry, to roll in the richness of the printed page.

In this way, perhaps I am hoping to live a little bit vicariously through them. I look forward to the day when I have to admonish one (or both) of them, "No books at the table," for then I will know I have raised a true reader.

And then, too, perhaps I will have enough time to pick up a book of my own again and start reading.