I saw a listing of different days and weeks that are observed and noticed that this week is National Library Week. I was thinking about what a role libraries have played in my life. My family didn't get a television until I was in fifth grade. This meant that as kids, we spent a lot of time playing outdoors, but we also spent a lot of time reading. We had a very small library that was close to us and my Mom took us there regularly. There were 4 kids in our family and we would take a big cardboard box with us to haul our books back home in. I remember my Mom sitting at a table, for quite some time, filling out all those cards by hand, with the name of the books we were taking out. We would have to count our books so we knew how many had to come back. We always took part in the summer reading program and got to go to special outings and won prizes because of the books we read. We also had a library in our church and we took out books from it every week. I'm sure that all those opportunities when I was young helped to increase my love of reading. When my kids were young, I took them to the library too. They each had their own tote bag and I made them count their books, just like I used to, so we didn't lose any. They all like to read too, so I guess that strategy worked. We are so lucky to have libraries available to us, with a selection of books ready for reading!
