“Doctor Who: You want weapons? We're in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!" - Russel T. Davis, Doctor Who, Tooth and Claw
The year I was seven my family moved from the small town of New Philadelphia, Ohio, across the Tuscarawas River to the small town of Dover, Ohio. We moved from a little yellow starter-type house to a brick ranch house with a big standstone fireplace in the living room and I got a canopy bed and white princess-style furniture with yellow roses on it. That fall I went to Dover Avenue Elementary school and made friends that I am still close to and know to this day.
But one of the biggest shocks of the move was the Dover Public Library. I must admit to a certain youthful prejudice about libraries: they were supposed to be big. And old. And have lots of columns out front. And heavy stone steps.
The Dover Public Library was across the street from the high school (a large brick edifice that was very sturdy and old and pleasingly comforting to my eye. I originally thought that it was the library, and our destination, until my mother informed me that she, herself, had gone to high school there and that our path lay across the street). The Library was modern and low to the ground, built of light, sandy colored brick and glass. Shallow concrete stairs led up to the big windows and shining glass doors. This was totally alien country to me.
But I could see the books inside. Stacks and shelves and rows of books. My mother took me in, and we obtained the library card that would be one of my most prized possessions for years to come. The children's section was to the back of the building, and this was where I started out. I wandered the shelves and was weirdly startled to find many well-known picture books and other favorites at THIS library, but in different places. I began to roam the 'young readers' in their taller shelves and was excited by the interspersion of strange new titles and covers and familiar old friends.
I don't remember what I took out originally at the Dover Library. I do remember that I would often take out a book I had liked before to re-read along with other titles that were new to me. I am still a tremendous re-reader and seem to find something new and fresh enjoyment even in books that I've read over and over. I think that this habit began in me with our move to Dover. In taking out books that I knew I liked, along with riskier new titles, I began my pattern of re-reading that would be with me all of my life.
What did I read from the Dover Library? There were a series of 'biographies for young people' that my mother and I both remember as having orange covers and a sort of seventies-style design on the covers. (does anyone know or recall these books? There were a LOT of them, but I haven't been able to find any pictures of them). I burned through a couple of these when I couldn't find any fiction to read, and particularly remember Annie Oakley, Helen Keller and Marie Curie.
I never really got into either Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys. I'm not sure why - there were certainly a lot of those books and I know a lot of people who grew up loving them. But I did read a similar series, recommended to me by my mother, who had read them herself as a child: The Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope.
Ok, so I did choose the cover of this particular title for its maximum weirdness value. I do remember reading it, just because it did have that strange cover. But these two sets of twins- Bert and Nan, aged 12, and Freddie and Flossie, aged 6- really got around. The Bobbsey Twins solve mysteries, travel the world, make a television show, live on a houseboat, and basically find Secrets and Mysteries everywhere.
The first 72 books were published between 1904 and 1979 and another 30 books were published between 1987 to 1992. You could read them in no particular order, but the changes over the years in styles and the uses of things like cars, telephones and hundreds of other things meant that mixing the stories up meant that they were sort of pleasantly odd and confusing. Also, it turns out that the actual stories were written by more than a dozen people over the years. (Thanks, Wikopedia!)
Because two sets of fraternal twin brothers and sisters who travel the world and solve mysteries wasn't weird at all, right?
Most of the books were re-written in the 1960s and updated, particularly in the way that the Bobbsey family cook Dinah and her husband Sam the handyman, both of whom were black, are treated as characters. And yes, in some of the older books the dialog and behavior is as cringe-worthy and racist as you might think. But- it was also strange enough to me to make me question it and wonder why Sam and Dinah would speak so differently and were treated so differently by the writers and other characters. So, weirdly enough again, thanks Bobbsey Twins for opening my mind at a young age and making me actually question Race in America in a seven year old way. Again, who would have thought?
As a final take-away, this series was not my go-to weekly reading. They were fill-ins, books to take out when I couldn't find enough to fill up my allotted five (yes FIVE!) books per visit. But they were sort of endearingly cheesey, even at a young age. To quote Wikopedia:
'The stories' unwavering wholesomeness lends itself to malicious parody. Perhaps the nastiest put-down came in a Gunsmoke episode (7.16 radio, 5.36 television) in which two mentally ill brothers decide to clean up the West by killing as many Indians as possible. (They also wipe out a family that refuses to feed them.) It's titled "The Bobsy Twins".'
That pretty much sums them up.
I went to the Dover Public Library once a week or more from the age of about 8 until I moved to Chicago at age 18. That library and the Park Middle School Library and the Dover High School Library would be my homes away from home for all those years. I read a lot of books through these places that I am going to talk to you about in upcoming posts and I cannot stress their importance in my life and formulating the thinking, reasoning person that I am today. They were a place of imagination and real life, history, myth, science and story that opened up the world to me.
When looking for a quote to begin this post, it was almost impossible to choose one. So many great thinkers, writers and geniuses have written about their love of libraries that you could have an entire blog just of their quotes.
But having to choose in today's climate of slashing budgets and lack of essential support of public libraries, of librarians valiantly attempting to keep their resources up to date and available to a public that increasingly cannot always afford either reading materials or vital internet access, I want to end with a quote that really rang true for me:
“My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn't have any excuse to be stupid.”
― Joan Bauer, Rules of the Road
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