The Libraries- Opening a Reading World, Part 1

“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better”- Barack Obama

I know that I owned picture books as a young child. I remember my parents reading Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go and also his Book of Manners with Pig Will and Pig Won't. There are a few specific picture books I remember being given as gifts that I will talk about later. 

But the majority of the books I read or had read to me between the ages of about 2 and 8 came from the library. 

The Library. Just saying the word can immediately conjure up for me the many libraries I have known with a kind of shimmering, wistful calm. I can smell the slightly dusty scent of old pages, the sharper tang of cellophane wrappers around the book jackets, the wood polish smell of tables and chairs. The quiet of hush of the libraries of my childhood seemed more important to me than the hush of a church. Holier, I suppose, although I didn't really grasp that concept at the time. Libraries were my chapel and books became a kind of religion for me. 

Until I was almost 8 years old we lived in the small town of New Philadelphia, Ohio. I don't remember when my mother began to take me to the library there, but I do remember how pleasing and official the building seemed to me as a child. Its solid red brick and towering white columns, and wrought iron railings flanking wide, shallow stairs all seemed a fitting monument of grandeur to encase the magic and wonders within. 

There was the main floor of the library, which held many deep chairs, a long, wide counter for checking out books and lots of adults, many of whom seemed to sit reading newspapers that hung like towels over long wooden rods in racks on one side of the room. Wide windows let in the sunlight, but the library was always cool, even on the warmest day.

Going up the wide staircase would lead you down an open sort of hallway with what seemed like a hundred rooms leading off of it, each one filled with no-nonsense metal shelves of book after book after book. Fiction, Non-Fiction. Travel. History, Cooking, How-To... they went on and on and I thought that there could not possibly be any knowlege that wasn't contained in these stacks and shelves that went on and on forever. I did not go into those rooms without my mother when I was little. I think that even though I already loved books and felt like they looked upon me with a kind of loving tolerance as well, that if I dared the rooms alone, I would be swallowed up forever by an endless jungle of ink and paper and library-smell and never be found again. 

Down a smaller stairway from the main hall, through a yellow painted corridor with a funny old-fashioned ceramic drinking fountain and through wooden glass paned doors was my place: the Children's Library. 

This room had a small stage at one end with musty velvet curtains that were always shut. The librarians worked behind desks set in front of it and looked out onto a room filled with light from the fixtures above as well as window wells set along the top of the walls. 

There were some small low tables and chairs for the littlest kids and then heavier wooden tables, longer and more serious, in the center of the room for more serious readers. Even as a small child I preferred these tables to the 'baby' section, with its miniature chairs with spindly metal legs and pastel molded plastic. 

A double row of low wooden shelves housed all the picture books for the youngest children and taller wooden shelves stood in impressive rows (although I think there were only four or five of them) filled with more difficult picture books and novels for young readers. 

I had learned to read when I was around four years old, following along as my parents read to me and sort of absorbing the words through osmosis and churning them back out with delight in my own ability, Going to the library and being considered responsible enough to be left alone with the children's librarian occurred when I was five or six and was awarded my own orange cardboard library card with an official metal bar with my number embedded in the card. I remember that you were only permitted to take out 3 books on a children's card and I often had to wait for my mother to come downstairs to retrieve me and take the remainder of my stack out on her adult library card. 

I cannot recall the name of the children's librarian at the New Philia Public Library. (I just called my mother and she was sorry to say that she couldn't remember the name either). But I do remember her vividly. She wore glasses and had soft looking, white curled hair. She was infinitely patient with the little kids in her domain- much more so than I was. 

I was always very involved at the library, and never would have dreamed of raising my voice or misbehaving or doing anything that might have gotten me ejected out of the kingdom. I had very little tolerance for other kids who made noise or ran around the shelves or whose parents had to be located in the adult library and then thumped downstairs to drag their offending offspring away with them. 

The main thing I remember the children's librarian doing was teaching me how to make pussy willow cats. She always had a vase of pussy willows on her desk and if you were careful, she would allow you to stroke the soft pods of grey fur. If you were VERY good, she would let you pluck one off of the branch and then glue it carefully to a blank card from the card catalog. Then she would draw a fence beneath the pod, and pointed ears and a tail (or help you to draw it) and you would have a pussy willow kitty sitting on a fence. 

Once we got accustomed to one another, the librarian seldom bothered me. I would spend a lot of time choosing my books and usually end up with a pile, sitting at a long wooden bench at one of the tables in the center of the room. Fortunately, my mother liked to spend time choosing her books too, and I can only remember a few occasions where she had to hurry me into making a choice or was ready to go before me. 

When I was around five or six there are two books that immediately come to mind when I think of this library, both picture books and both from England. I have no idea how they ended up at the New Philia Public Library, but they were different and immediately intrigued me. I was fortunate enough to find them years later for my own son when he was small. 

The first is The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord. This story of a quaint English village that is suddenly attacked by wasps (somewhat scary illustrations of wasps, maybe this is why I still hate them so much today?) and comes up with the idea of baking a giant loaf of bread and making a huge sandwich (helicopters must lift the top slice into place) and trapping all the wasps in it stirred my imagination. The details of the colorful drawings invited a lot of re-reading and the words were just odd enough for me to understand that this book came from somewhere else. This is a book I still love today and give as a gift. 

The second book or set of books I remember first reading at this library was the Church Mice series by Graham Oakley.  There are a lot of these charming books, illustrated with beautiful watercolors, all about a large family of church mice whose church is going to be torn down and the marmalade tabby cat who becomes their friend and helps them. The language in these books was much harder, the stories more involved, but the pictures and the urgency of the church mice' plights and adventures kept me at them, taking them out more than once. The series begins with a singular Church Mouse, but in later books the mice and cat Go Abroad, Spread Their Wings, find a Ring, keep a Diary, are At Bay, celebrate Christmas and Go To the Moon. In short, these mice and their friends got around to amazing adventures and I will always be grateful to whatever librarian had the opportunity to order them all so that they were there for me to find.

I also remember reading the entire series of Billy and Blaze books by C.W. Anderson. These are easy reader books with detailed and realistic pencil drawings and began my life-long love affair with horses and horse books. I'm going to talk about horse books later in more detail, but I remember reading and taking these books out here for the first time. Billy and his faithful pony Blaze rescue a hurt German Shepard dog, make friends with a Spotted Pony, help fight a Forest Fire and have a dozen adventures. These sweet books are such classics- I wonder if kids still read them? I hope that they do.

The final books that I most remember reading from the New Phila library were the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Although I didn't notice it then, these were also illustrated by my old friend from Charlotte's Web, Gareth Williams. 

I remember reading Little House in the Big Woods and being entranced by it. The maple sugar candy they made in the snow, the dance with all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, Pa playing his fiddle and Ma's waist, still as tiny as when she was a girl. When my own mother presented me with Little House on the Prairie, I was truly torn. On one hand, the story would go on! I could spend more time with Laura and Ma and Pa and Mary and baby Carrie. On the other hand, I could never quite understand or forgive Pa for taking them AWAY from the Big Woods. Everything was so great there!  Everyone was there! Why would you go?!? Seriously. Through all those other books in the series I still never quite got over Pa being such a rolling stone and hauling the rest of the family along with them. 

One more point about Little House in the Big Woods: years later I would pick up this book to read to my own son when he was about six or seven. Interestingly enough, when asked about it later, literally the only things he could remember about the book- and describe in vivid detail- are the bear and panther attacks and the take-away that the Big Woods was filled with deadly animals and you needed to avoid, kill or move away from them. So maybe not wanting to leave the Big Woods was just me?

Our librarian, seeing me immersed in the Little House series recommended another book of frontier life: Caddy Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink, which won the Newbery Award for 1936. It is literally the only time I can ever recall the librarian steering me wrong. It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion- an award winner, another story of a brave pioneer lass. But for some reason I found it incredibly dull. To this day the only thing I remember about it is that I believe Caddie hides from marauding Indians in an old tree stump at one point. It just didn't resonate with me, and I only remember the book because it was and has been so rare in my life that a librarian recommended something to me that I didn't like. 

We moved to Dover, Ohio, the town across the Tuscarawas River when I was seven. Although the two towns, Dover and New Phila are very close to one another, we didn't really go back to the New Phila library after that. But although I would miss my first library, there would be another new one waiting to be discovered.