Libraries, books, and reading were big parts of our education. Mom taught us to read with a book called 100 Easy Lessons. Think the incentive for me to finish was a trip to Planet Fun, which Andrew had gotten me pumped over when he told me about a slide where you went so fast you almost flew into a ball pit. (Incidentally, I've always associated Planet Fun with Pizza Planet from Toy Story.) It may have been a book still when I was using it, but we eventually turned it into a 3-ring binder. This was its cover:
Andrew was also a big influence in teaching me to read. For fun, we'd read his Boys' Life magazines and comics like Calvin and Hobbes. Dad too would read the Bible to us while we drew pictures on the den floor. One time I drew an armored knight -- think Dad was reading Ephesians 6 that evening! -- and we fastened his arms and legs together with brads. He'd also read things to us kids before bed like Dr Seuss.
When I was very little, we'd go to the Lomas/Tramway library in town, which had a gorilla made from tires in its courtyard. Later, we would drive past the library in Tijeras on our way home from town to watch its progress as it was being built. (Its Facebook page says it was finished in October 1994.) I think I remember us being there for the Grand Opening, which would make sense given how excited we were about it.
We also watched Cherry Hills Library go up, since it's over by Mom's parents' house. (Its Facebook page says that was 1998.)
For the longest time, Tuesday was our library day. Especially when we were car schooling we would stop by on our way to or from town. We were very active in the summer reading program. We often took (and take!) books everywhere we went because reading was something to do in downtime: in waiting areas, while our siblings were taking classes, on road trips and vacations.
We got to where we could read in moving vehicles, even on rough roads! I would entertain -- I hope I was entertaining! 😛 -- other passengers by reading aloud strips I thought were funny from Garfield books I borrowed from the library. Think all the kids borrowed Garfield books. (Coincidentally, Mom's dad Don and Haley share the same birthday as Garfield artist Jim Davis. And the day after is Mom's mom Judy's birthday.)
Even when we were going to the library weekly, we would sometimes each get many books. We used to have a communal blue plastic basket like you might use for laundry filled with the weekly haul. Although we did also keep books in our rooms. Because we'd also be asking for holds on books from other branches, Mom joked we were good for the library's book circulation.
We all kind of had genres we liked to choose from.
Dad has always been mystery (detectives like Morse, Poirot, Dalgliesh, etc.) and thrillers like Clancy and Cussler. He and Matthew read Ted Dekker's Odd series, and he and I read John Grisham.
Mom would do whatever our unit study was at the time (Ancient Egypt, Wild West, etc.), productivity books, and things like best-sellers for beach reading. Everyone had genres they liked, but Mom and I are probably the most discursive. I didn't read a lot of sci-fi, but I read some, and I think she's the same way. Think my liking for zany fiction comes from her, because she liked Ramona the Great, Steven Kellogg, and Junie B. Jones.
Andrew liked sci-fi/fantasy like Dune and spooky stuff like Goosebumps, which he would pass on to me and I also liked -- think we may have been limited to one per person per trip to limit nightmares... and also to encourage a little more variety in our reading 😉 -- and Stephen King.
I liked Encyclopedia Brown, zany fiction (like the Bailey School Kids series or Judy Blume's Fudge books), comics, classics (one series had books like Edgar Allen Poe and The House of the Seven Gables in comic book form), and non-fiction.
Matthew, our Trekkie, was also sci-fi/fantasy, reading Star Trek books by Shatner and Nimoy. I think once or twice he found Dr Who books too. Tom Baker and K-9 were his favorite. He once knit a long Tom Baker scarf and gave it to Dad, and I think he also made a cardboard K-9. He and Haley were big fans of the PBS morning lineup and would check out the Arthur books frequently. Recently he's also been reading classics like 20,000 Leagues and Moby Dick.
Haley went through a stage where she read a lot of Mary Kate and Ashley books. (Think she probably wondered what it would be like to have a sister.) As they grew up, she and Matthew both got into Mangas. One she lent me to read a few years ago was One Piece -- not much into Mangas myself but that was a really fun book!
Just by being there so much, we got to know some of the librarians pretty well. One in particular was Michele, whom I remember being at the children's center desk and who we talked to about summer reading.
One time while checking out a nonfiction children's book by Asimov (part of his Library of the Universe Series?) I got in a conversation with a librarian about him. I knew little about him or the subject matter. But I'd skimmed the book, and there was a drawing of him on it and I thought he looked smart, so I told her he was a genius. Probably the truest yet most uninformed thing I've ever said! 🙂
When Mom needed to clean house when we were little, a lot of times we would help, but sometimes we would go outside to play. (Sometimes she may have just needed time away from us rapscallions.😉) By legend, Andrew and I would sneak (library?) books out there around our waists under our shirts. Swings and slides and dogs are fun, but books are too!
When LOTR was in theaters, Andrew and I made a board game like Trivial Pursuit about it for an event at the library. Seems like we met a fellow student named Forrest from Karate at that event too. Somewhere I've got a bunch of bookmarks from the library around then of the movie's characters (can edit if I find them). Here's one:
We also found some work through the library. One of Andrew's first jobs was as a page at our local library. And when he went to live with Dad's mom Celeste in Texas, he worked in a library over there too. (Celeste also got us, especially Matthew, into Hank the Cowdog books on tape, which she would borrow from the library and play in her car while traveling.) I volunteered at the library when I was not at school. And when I was at NMT and UNM, it wasn't unusual to find me in the library.
We got hit a little hard by fines when we moved to Virginia. Weren't used to them. Our libraries in NM have a very generous policy about renewals and late books. (One library book that I'd swear we had for years was Stranger with My Face -- we got so many library books they'd sometimes get mixed up with our own, but they'd still have a barcode or big orange sticker showing they were the library's!) The selection of books in VA, though, was top-notch. I found a receipt the other day of books I borrowed, and it was stuff I'd forgotten all about until I rediscovered after school, books by Peter Singer and Dostoevsky for example.
The library has been in many ways our home away from home. I still visit, not as much as I used to, but I also still have fond memories of libraries and the books and folks that we found inside them.
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