Reading. My Favorite Hobby.

I read. . .a lot. Some may even say I’m obsessed. That’s okay. I can think of worse obsessions. I’ve enjoyed reading since I was a kid. I invested a small fortune in The Babysitter’s Club, Sweet Valley Twins/High, Choose Your Own Adventures, and so many others. The highlight of Christmas and birthdays was adding to my personal library. (I’m just waiting for my daughters to be old enough to enjoy all my favorites themselves and it’s no lie when I tell you one of my first thoughts when I found out I had given birth to a daughter was that I could share all my books with her. Oh yes, I have boxes and boxes of books to pass on, to not one, but two little girls.) I digress. To further whet my appetite for books my mom gave me her complete collection of the original Nancy Drew mysteries, Boxcar Children, The Bobbsey Twins, and Little House on the Prairie. This was all in addition to weekly trips to the library.

Here is the library in my hometown:

(www.franklinpa.gov)

I used to love walking into this building (and if I lived in the area, I would love it still).

There is just something about a library. The smell of books and the “tha thump tha thump” of the machine stamping the due date on the card, that was then filed, were comforting and familiar.

At my library, the children’s books were all marked on the spine with a colored dot which corresponded to a child’s reading level. I still remember red dots were for babies. There were also yellow and blue dots (possibly green too) although I can no longer remember in which order one advanced. Regardless of the dot, books with the best covers were selected and my siblings and I never left the library without a stack of 6 or 7 (each).

Story hour was a favorite library activity. I must have been pretty young, five perhaps, and story hour was held in the finished basement of the library. My mom would drop me off and I’d run over to a tall stack of carpet squares and make my selection. I had my favorites. The librarian would sit in a chair at the front of the room, to the left of the doorway, with all of us kids crowded around in a half circle on the floor, sitting on our coveted carpet square. When she was done reading, we would turn ourselves around to face the opposite end of the room for the associated puppet show. I remember watching a librarian perform “There was an Old Woman who Swallowed a Fly”. It’s still a favorite.

As I got older I participated in summer reading contests and won several too although I’ve long since forgotten the prizes. One year had a historical theme and each participant stuck a red dot, a thumbtack maybe, on an over-sized map of the United States where the book took place. I can still picture in great detail the cover of one book I read that particular summer, but cannot remember the title. I didn't like it much.

Today of course, things are different. The “click” of a computer mouse is the new “tha thump.” I can search for, and request a book online, and in turn receive an email when it’s ready for pick-up. More often than not I rush into the library, have my card scanned, watch the librarian pull books from the hold shelf for me, and rush out with the stack (yes, it’s still a stack – some things don’t change). But sometimes, as a special treat, I walk into the library with nothing but time on my hands and enjoy the library as I did as a child – walking up and down rows of books and choosing one based on the cover.