Ch-ch-changes

 When I was a kid, I loved to read. Loved it. I got my first library card in kindergarten, and the day it arrived in the mail, my mom came into the school building to show me through the window in the door at pickup time. She slid it under the door so I could show all of my classmates and my teacher. I felt like a rock star! Then, when I was six, I got my first chapter book as a holiday gift when I was six, and I felt so grown up. It was Superfudge, and it kicked off a Judy Blume spree that lasted for several years. 

My mom was a voracious reader - she literally always had a paperback in her hand or nearby - so it was easy to mimic her behavior, and she encouraged the habit. I rarely asked for toys and such, so when the monthly Scholastic book form came home, I would circle all of the titles I was interested in, and I almost always got them all. The best times, however, were the times we would go to Velma’s Books, a used bookstore in the corner of a local sporting goods store. Every week my mom would trade in a paper grocery sack filled with paperbacks (almost always Harlequin romances at that time, but she truly did read everything), and fill another one with her reads for the week. I always left with one or two new Sweet Valley books or a book in the Anastasia series.

After she died, when I was almost 12, the trips to Velma’s and to the library ended. Book shopping happened when we were at KMart, doing errands for my grandmother, or on our occasional trip to the mall; it became incidental. My dad wasn’t a reader, so it didn’t always occur to him to make a special trip, but he did always buy me books when I asked for them. Once in a while he would take me to the library, but because of his work schedule, I seldom got to spend more than 10 or 15 minutes there before they closed. With the lack of access, my interest waned.

Not until I went to college did I spend any appreciable time in a library. My composition classes were held in a classroom in the library, so I was able to rekindle my affinity for that space. Graduate school meant spending lots of time in the stacks, and the fact that I was in an English program meant that my friends loved to browse for books, too. Book shopping became a priority again. One birthday was spent visiting all three of the Half-Price Books locations in Indianapolis. I got a part time job at Waldenbooks, which turned into a full time job for a while. Book shopping became a priority again, and my reading habit picked up again. 

Later, when I was pregnant and had left my job, I returned to the library to fill my reading needs, and I haven’t left yet. Weekly (at least) trips with the kids to check out books and videos, for story time and other programs became a mainstay of our routine. We spent six years homeschooling, and we would check out the full limit on three library cards (a total of 75 items). The kids would sit in the backseat reading on the way home - it was like a birthday every couple of weeks. I found a used bookstore to take them to, so we could trade outgrown books for new ones. 

Now, years later, I work in a library and while it is at times very difficult (particularly in light of COVID), I feel like I’m where I need to be. I can browse books and find new authors, though I find myself drawn more and more to graphic novels and memoirs.  I feel like the graphic format is going to continue to grow in popularity over the next decades. The illustrations are inviting, encouraging reluctant readers in a way that a solid chunk of text does not. The artwork is an integral part of the storytelling, relaying information that would be difficult to put into words, and adding multiple layers of meaning to enrich the text. While it may seem to some that the space given to illustrations reduces the opportunity to practice literacy skills, it actually creates a more complex environment in which to synthesize the information on the page, allowing for different cognitive processes to work together in a sophisticated way. I look forward to seeing the benefits of these processes develop in the readers I know.