Library books: feeding their addictions

Library books: feeding their addictions
Originally uploaded by MrsEds

Via Flickr:
At the age my kids are, they don't read books, they ingest them. Not literally of course, but they nibble away at books, returning again and again to the pages they like. They don't want just one book on Dr Who, they want them all. They're not always sure what they like, so library books enable them to develop their tastes and experiment with new flavours. They get to sit among books, take them off shelves, flick through them, read snippets all under the approving gaze of a librarian.

For as good as book shops are for kids, at the end of the day the booksellers must sell stock and so it's hard not to hover and make noises about 'not spoiling the book' etc. The good librarian, on the other hand, understands that a child's love for books has to be left to grow unmolested by fussing grown-ups.

Every single literature addiction I have began in a library from the moment I met and fell in love with Sherlock Holmes in a tiny (now under threat) library in Ipswich. My parents did not deny me books, they loved them too but they couldn't have kept up with my voracious appetite any more than I can keep up with my kids' today.

Closing libraries is closing minds, denying opportunity for the dreaming child to find soul mates in books, keeping the child in their place being fed what they grown-ups think they should be reading. You can't measure a return on investment on a library, how can you measure developing imagination, knowledge and empathy in our children and ourselves in a piechart?

I am most fortunate that Haringey have given a commitment to our libraries. I'm not having to chain myself to railings or weeping outside watched over by police as they empty the stock and board up the windows as is happening across the country, but each one of those closures is another bitter blow and a terrible legacy for this government that must have their Victorian forefathers spinning in their graves.