Ten Reasons to Go to the Library

1. So you can go to the self-checkout and make things beep. 

2. So your children will see a place where people, lots of people, think books are cool.

3. To watch the librarians sit at the check-out desk doing stuff on the computer and wonder what they are doing. Researching books? Solitaire? Blogging?

3. So your children will know books are important to you.

4. So you can win the stares of the librarians as you go to the self-checkout with seventy-five books. Checking out seventy-five books takes way to long at the self-checkout, as the librarians well know, but you can't go to the regular check-out because there's still that one book you can't find and is now two months overdue. And you're pretty sure the librarians know exactly what you are doing. If your children are with you, you can use them as a shield and pretend they are insisting you go to the self-checkout so they can help checkout books. Even though they never do this.

5. So libraries can get funding to buy more books—libraries are generally funded based on circulation and use. 

6. So you can hang your head with shame as your fines add up to well above ten dollars. Then you nod gratefully as the librarian tells you that your fines will only be ten dollars because they never charge more than that for fines. (You sort of have to pretend you didn't know that they always reduce fines to ten dollars, because otherwise you will feel very guilty that you waited for your fines to build and build...).

7. So your kids can have every option in the world available to them and they can try on all different kinds of books on for size—books you will never find at Barnes and Noble.

7. So your account on the library website can look like this:

Account Overview

Items Out- See and renew currently checked out items

Checked Out: 136

Overdue: 2

Lost: 0

Hold Requests- Items ready to be picked up and waiting to become available

Requested items ready for pick up: 0

Requested items not yet available: 7

Blocks- Fines, blocks and account messages

Number of Blocks: 90

Current Balance: $11.80 (Number of blocks 90? What does that even mean???) 8. So you can pretend you are buying books by bringing Trader Joe's bags and stuffing them silly. Then you can talk to yourself at the self-checkout about how this is really going to cost too much money and you should never, ever buy books again, because you have a problem. It's like a nicotine patch. 9. So your children can make friends with the librarians and become little Matilda's—because who doesn't want their children to be little Matilda's? 10. So on a day when your house is really messy and you just realized that your seven-year-old has chewed a hole through his t-shirt because he has a t-shirt sucking issue and your five-year-old is getting warts (!) and your eleven-year-old's rabbit has chewed a hole through a bookcase (yes, a hole) and your husband suddenly has no socks—zero—and yesterday, your twelve-year-old snapped the fingerboard off her violin in a colossal trip and your nine-year-old dragged homeschool out so he wasn't finished until nine o'clock at night, you can say to yourself, "Well, at least I take my kids to the library!" Here are some of the greatest picture books in the world for your library trip this week: Boxes for Katje by Candace Fleming The Cats in Krasinski Square by Karen Hesse The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Cole Too Many Frogs by Sandy Asher The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot! by Scott Magoon Finklehopper Frog by Irene Livingston The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers Buttons by Brock Cole

Nonfiction and fiction mixed together in fabulous books

These four picture books are worth reading to your older children, and if they don't want you to read them out loud, leave them in the bathroom. Leave them on the kitchen table. Leave them on their beds. Leave them somewhere and your kids will have ten minutes of amazing art mixed with a great story and a real life individual who made a difference in this world!

For the Birds: the Life of Roger Tory Peterson by Peggy Thomas


Mama Miti by Donna Jo Napoli


Jose! Born to Dance by Susanna Reich


Abe Lincoln Tells a Joke: How Laughter Saved the President (and the country) by Kathleen Krull

New and Fabulous

We should never underestimate the importance of a well-chosen library book. Parents so often pick out a few that are on display (and frequently, at least at our library, the books on display are books that haven't been checked out in awhile, not books the librarians think are great) while the kids run around and grab whatever they see on the shelf that looks fun.

Then everyone gets home. It is time to read and parent and child snuggle down with their new pile of library books. But half of them aren't very good and a few are very terrible, and the parent is bored so their reading-skills are less than stellar, and the child is a little bored, and reading time is cut short because there are other, more interesting things to do.

There should almost never be anything more interesting to do than read a book. :)

This weeks' Picture Book Library List is particular fantastic. These are brand new books for a brand new year, and your kids will love them. Just take a look at these covers and this amazing art. All so different. Every story is so different: heartfelt, funny, warm and wonderful in their own way. I wish so much I owned a library and I could own all these books right in my home. Sigh.

The Art of Miss Chew by Patricia Polacco
Black Dog by Levi Penfold
Chloe, Instead by Micah Player
Ellen's Broom by Kelly Starling Lyons
The Huey's in the New Sweater by Oliver Jeffers
The Insomniacs by Karina Wolf
Kali's Song by Jeanette Winter
Maudie and Bear by Jan Ormerod
Old Robert and the Sea Silly Cats by Barbara Joosse
Rosie Sprout's time to shine by Allison Wortche
Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham