Every now and then you strike real gold at the library - a random book that just resonates and connects you to an author and their wonderful world, or a children's book that resonates with them in a way that teaches them something they just are not able to hear from a parent. We are either our local library's dream come true or worst nightmare depending on perspective. I suppose for those who shelve books we're the latter, but for meeting quotas or showing a healthy community need for the library, we're at the top.
The way Jordan devours books (two chapter books and a long children's book today - and we weren't at home very long) and I try to work variety into Sawyer's nighttime reading list (the same book from our shelves night after night just makes me cringe), we're pretty dependent. I get a wonderful stream of good literature from my mother, but often need the thriller/mystery as brain candy. I am a heavy user of reference books as well, from massage to gardening, pregnancy to parenting. Tom is forever in search of the next greatest autobiography or sports journalism book. I am eternally grateful for our library's wonderful website and for the ability to log on and reserve books online. Our library is one of four in the county and as our county takes two hours to drive end to end, going branch to branch is not a possibility.
Here's a poem I wrote in the fall:
We have two tactics at the library: I go online and reserve books for me and the kids that I've come across on a blog or that are part of a series that Jordan's devoted to. Then I bring the kids in and give them some arbitrary number of books that they can choose from the shelves. Usually it's between 8 and 12. Before Christmas break I think it was twenty. And almost enough. I usually augment with a selection I find appealing as the reader/listener. Three weeks ago one of us put a little book called Little By Little into the stack. It's a sweet little book about a little boy otter (named Otto) who has an older sister and a fear of swimming. We've renewed it once. And we may have to buy it. In the book Otto has a list of things he can do, which is quite extensive, and a list of things he can't do, which is one item: swimming. After much parental encouragement, his older sister finally tells him that the secret is to start off small, and before long, Otto is finishing big - jumping off the Biggest Ever Rock into the Deepest Ever Pool and doing acrobatics underwater.
The book resonated with Sawyer, to say the least. And at a flyby lunch visit to the library last week I picked up a couple more swimming-centered books that helped as well. Today at the gym he let go of the death grip he usually maintains on us, and was swimming over and over from the edge of the pool to the lane line and back again. We had to forcibly make him take breaks.
Jordan is almost always "playing a game" that involves her being some kind of baby animal, often a kitten, with a new name and color change a few times a day. Sawyer almost always joins in, usually the same kind of animal as his sister, always named Posey. Midway through his swimming extravaganza I asked him if he was an otter or a boy. He turned his head just before launching himself off the wall for another mini lap and said with a smile, "otter." 
Putting his jammies on, he asked why his shoulders and back were sore. In bed (having just read Little By Little again, of course), he said with his eyes at half mast before descending into that wonderful dark pool of sleep, "I did it little by little, too."
Here's a poem I wrote in the fall:
Book Binding
My daughter
Has my addiction:
I can see the need thrum
in her veins:
Books.
Like drugs or coffee or new love,
no doubting the
narcotic effect.
Did she inherit it from me?
Or in providing her
the recommended
daily allowance
of childhood reading
Did her need take root?
I know, I know
I use the word need:
"We NEED
Food, Water and Shelter,"
Her father likes to say.
But still.
She is five
And I feel her need
for the written word
viscerally:
In the car,
In the between moments
At school. At home.
In childhood
Reading was both
My escape
And belonging.
In childhood. Ha!
Is.
I know her life is less
A maelstrom
Than mine at her age.
I hope she does not find
The same affinity
With the sadder characters,
Does not long for
The more graceful life
As I might have.
But who can know.
She escapes,
And this sudden gaining
Of ability
Forms her wings:
I feel more a leaving now
Than I did when she exited
My body.
Perhaps this is why
My mother
Has always given me books:
To give me the journey
And the freedom -
But to know
Where I have gone.
Books are a shelter,
Sustenance for the soul,
Quench a thirst more deep.
I am not a perfect mother
(Have only read about them)
But I have given her this:
The ability to sate herself
With words.
11/08
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