So I’m driving my children home from school, half-listening to the conversation about their day, when my 9-year-old daughter says, “You know what my least favorite class is? Library!”
Does anyone remember Ally McBeal? Remember how she finds out that the ex-love of her life is not only working at her law firm but that he’s married, and three arrows fly through the office right into her her heart – thwip, thwip, thwip! – and her chest contracts a tiny bit with each one but she keeps smiling just a little so no one knows she’s about to keel over and die on the spot? That was me.
When I probe a little more, I find out that she likes story time and checking out books just fine, but that the librarian and the assistant yell at the class a lot and that’s what she doesn’t like. So I’m feeling better (not because she’s getting yelled at…I mean, that’s not good…I’m just glad library class itself isn’t turning her against the whole library concept…that’s just the librarian’s fault…wait a minute…that’s not good…) So anyway, I turn to my 11-year-old son and say, “What about you? Do you like library class?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, what do you do in library class?”
“Work.”
“What kind of work?”
“I dunno.”
“Do you do your school work?”
“No.”
“Homework?”
“No.”
“Well, what KIND of work do you do? Reading? Calisthenics? Ditch-digging? What?!”
“I dunno. We made a podcast.”
“Wow, really? A podcast? That must have been fun…what was it about? What did you learn about podcasts? Did you like it?”
“I dunno. It was okay. It took a really long time.”
“…”
Thank God for my sister, who always knows how to bring me back from the brink. She not only fondly remembers our elementary school librarian, but credits her with changing her life. “She introduced me to Dickens! I adored that woman!” My sister is a voracious reader, and it sounds like the school librarian gave her the best reader’s advisory a girl could ask for, leaving my sister with a love of books and libraries that is unmatched, except by my mother who always had stacks of books from the library when we were growing up. I used to wonder if the librarians secretly kept track of who reads the most books, and would maybe give my mom an award someday. They never did. That’s only for kids.
So now, we’re in a time and place where my kids are lucky to have a school librarian at all, because getting back to my sister she teaches in an elementary school in Massachusetts, and they don’t have a school librarian and she says it’s a crime. Kids can check books out via an aide, but they don’t know how to find a good book, never mind how to tell good information from bad. They don’t have anyone to guide them to Dickens, or teach them how to do research, or show them how to do a podcast and tell them why a website with lots of flashing signs that say, “You’re the 1,000,000th customer! Click here for your prize!!!” is bad.
I’m not in the school media program, but now I wish I was. I’d march right into that school and tell those kids what’s what. “Kids!” I’d say, kind of firm and frowny but with a twinkle in my eye that lets them know I’m not one of those evil librarians who yell all the time, “Kids! Listen up! What you learn in library class could change your life forever!” And then I’d tell them about my sister.
