Monday, December 8, 2008

Early Childhood Library Class and Book Abandonment Issues

This just in from our Director - reminiscing about the start of a lifelong love affair with books.
Ms. Bakos writes,

"I started 6th grade in a newly built middle school with a library stocked with brand new books. My classmates and I were excited about our first in-school library, but we were less than pleased to discover a weekly Library Class, complete with homework and tests. We learned to introduce ourselves to books. First, you look at the front and back covers, then you read the inside blurbs, and finally you read the first page. At any point in this process it is acceptable to return the book to the shelf. I still follow this procedure when selecting a book to read.

I must have been absent the day the Librarian discussed how to separate from a book that is just not living up to its promise. Over the years I have downsized my own rules about how many pages to read before calling it quits from fifty to twenty. When I am listening to an audiobook, I have lowered the standard to two CDs before ejecting and listening to the radio. My arbitrary rules do not lessen the guilt I feel that someone has taken the trouble to write/record this story that I am abandoning.

There is one rule of Library Class that I have never broken. I never read the last page first."

1 comment:

Anne said...

Thanks for the memories. My experience with Library Class almost scared me off libraries forever. I still think the Dewey Decimal System is weirdly arbitrary and confusing.