A little girl learning to read sits in a chintz chair in her bedroom, The Tale of Peter Rabbit in her hands. She found the story in the local library, thrilled that she can read and follow the tale page by page.
That little girl was me. Being excited that I could read, that story launched my weekly visits to the library. Later, when I could read more advanced books, I took out at least two books a week and immediately sat in my chintz chair to start reading them. Soon I graduated to biographies of important women like Martha Washington and Abigail Adams along with other biographies about heroic girls and fascinating women. I have loved reading ever since.
Our library was a great place. It was full of promising tales, both true and fictional. I remember creeping along the shelves, my hands touching the dark wood, as I searched for books I might want to read, first in the children's section and later among the young adult shelves and then marveling at the seas of adult offerings.
April is National Library month and celebrates the critical role libraries and librarians play in expanding our knowledge, encouraging our curiosity, and facilitating our attempts at research, which comes in handy when there is something you desperately want to know more about, or simply want a good book to curl up with on winter's snowy days.
I recalled long drawers of index cards that told me where to find a pre-internet book. If I wasn't successful a librarian would help me, which often led to a conversation about what I wanted to read.
Librarian at the card files at high school in New Ulm Minnesota, 1974.
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Later, when I began to visit historical libraries that had long rows of tables with green glass lamps where serious scholars worked, I was fascinated by how intense they were. And I have been lucky enough to visit amazing libraries in several countries, like the Trinity College library in Dublin where the Book of Kells resides. Written more than 1200 years ago, it is known for the beauty of its stunningly illuminated borders on the manuscript pages that people wait in line to see.
Book of Kells, Folio 292r, Incipit to John. In principio erat verbum.
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