Thursday...let's book thru it!

Today's Booking Through Thursday question is:

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. (There’s no way my parents could otherwise have kept up with my book habit when I was 10.) So … What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?


I loved the library when I was young... it was a magical place. I first remember it at the elementary school I went to, Westgate Elementary. I can't remember the librarian's name, but I can still see her face. She was beautiful to me, a 3rd grader... her hair in a bun, cat eye glasses with jewels and a chain, and black sensible shoes. (this was quite some time ago, if you haven't picked up on that. LOL ).
The school library was probably no bigger than a regular classroom at the time, but it was huge in my mind, filled with shelves of books just for me. The Boxcar Children, Baby Island, The Cay, The Mouse and the Motorcycle! And it smelled so good....that wonderful musty booky smell.
And old Mrs. hair in bun, cat eye glasses, sensible shoe Librarian would read to us. We'd file in, having just heard that Callie's, (the girl who sits across from us in class,) brother had been killed in Viet Nam. We'd sit on the floor, sad and scared....and Mrs. hair in bun, cat eye glasses, sensible shoes, would then take us away!!
She'd take us to completely different worlds, where the "children" were in control (Boxcar Children, Baby Island, Gone-Away Lake) and we would lose our sorrow and fright in a different world. And then the recess bell would ring and we would all scramble to get our books checked out in time to go outside, except for me, who would like to linger as long as I could and just breath in that wonderful smell of the library and Mrs. Hair in Bun, cat eye glasses, Sensible shoes. (I think she wore White Shoulders perfume).

Fast Forward to my 2nd library memory....the summer between my 6th grade year and 7th grade years...1972. The public library and summer reading programs. My friend Kathy and I would ride our bikes down to the library and agonize over which 6 books (this was back when we had baskets on our bikes ) we were allowed to take home for a check out period of 2-weeks. (We, of course were always back the next week, so what did it matter that we could only take home 6 each?) But agonize we did... there was always a 7th or 8th one we wanted. And we passed back and forth a book by Zilpha Keatly Snyder, called "The Changeling".
We LOVED that book. I don't think anyone else got to check it out all summer long.

I met Zilpha Keatly Snyder years later...

LOL, I've always wanted to write a line like that....ahhahaaa...
okay, so I attended a conference where Zilpha Keatly Snyder was giving a class and I bought a book and had her autograph it and at that time I told her that I LOVED "The Changeling" when I was an adolescent and she smiled and said...."oh, so you're one of the Changeling Crowd."
Like we were special!! We were "one of them" The Changelings.
I will be a Changeling forever!!
You know...I think I'm going to go buy that book right now.

So those are my first memories of libraries.


I Love libraries....thanks for the question AND the memories. .. and I know that none of you know me, but I was just appointed to our little town's Library Board. I was sworn in and everything. Hooray!