When I was in the fourth grade and was being shown
around my new school the person conducting the tour took me to an amazing
place. It was a place I did not know
existed. She took me into a nondescript
single room and simply stated, “This is the library.”
My eyes must have bulged. I had never seen so many books. Shelves were lined from stem to stern with
books. I remember turning to her and
saying, “Whose books are these?”
She replied, “Ours.”
“Ours,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
She explained that any student could go to the
library and “check-out books.” She had
to explain to me that meant that any student could go and borrow a book or
books and bring them back in a week and borrowing
the books was free.
My love of libraries began. I already loved books, but I had little
access to them. Now, I had full access
to every book in the place and I dug in.
A student could check out two books at a time. I made a habit of reading as many books as I
could. I later learned about public
libraries where one could get a library card for free and borrow any book in
existence that was either there or through inter-library loan.
Because my parents paid little attention to what I
did and because at that time there were many liberal teachers and liberal
librarians, there was a wide range of authors on the shelves. I began reading beyond my years authors such
as Faulkner, Steinbeck and Pearl Buck to name a few.
In my immediate family, there were many things too
taboo to say out loud or ask questions about.
Not so with books, I learned about many things through both fiction and non-fiction. I kept reading. By the time I was in high school I tried to
read a book a night. I gained a
wonderful vocabulary and did extremely well on all word type testing because of
my extensive reading.
I traveled across the world and time and place
through books and I grew to know many people, male and female, young and old
and of nearly every nationality. I read what
the characters were thinking and how they thought.
Some characters were nice people, some were evil and
most of them had a mixture of good and bad. Books, the authors who wrote them, and the
characters they created molded me.
Books changed me from a shy child from the foothills
of North Caroling growing up in south Florida to a child then later a woman of
the world; although, I had not literally traveled the world. I grew and knew beyond my years because of
books.
I worry now because I don’t think enough children,
young people and even adults learn the joy of reading and the value of what can
be found on the written pages of books.
Many people have never been to a library. They do not know that the
doors to everywhere can be found there by stepping through the library door. Libraries now have many forms of media—not
just books and most of it is still free.
Make no mistake, I am not saying that I could talk
the kids of my time or other people into reading. Most of the time folks said, “I hate to
read.” I neither understood that then nor
do I understand it now because reading leads to freedom.
It is becoming less common for people to
hold actual books in their hands. Many
words are on tablets and phones and on computers—just as these words are. That is okay because words can travel quickly
across the world to people who may not otherwise be able to get them and I
think that is good.
But, I also want people to be able to hold a book in
their hands. Hundreds of years from now
I want people to be able to pick up some of the same books that I read, and be
able to find the exact words written down that I read and thought about. Because written words can cross generations
and boundaries and borders.
What if the words of the great thinkers had not been
written down? What if an emerging writer
writes profound thoughts that are not put into print? Will those ideas and those characters be lost
to us once the present technology changes if they are not put into print? I fear so.
What is to stop that from happening?
©Patty F.
Cooper, Elizabethton, Tennessee July 21, 2014
All Rights Reserved
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