See you at the Library
Libraries are one of the best resources for lovers of Kids Books. The small local branch that we visit has a large and comfortable area for young children’s books that my kids dearly love. We usually stop by on Saturday afternoon on the way home from swimming lessons and the kids get to explore and find books that they will like.
In today’s Wall Street Journal Online, I read an interesting article by Jeff Zaslow, entitled “Of the Places You’ll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?” In it he talks about the growing trend for kids to avoid the library, preferring the Internet for their research.
He notes that kids also prefer to own books rather than borrow them, a trend that Zaslow correctly attributes to our culture’s acquisitive inclinations.
They’re missing out. My small local branch library has a better selection of kids books than Barnes and Nobles or Borders. It doesn’t have as much of the junk, and it has more of the better stuff, and it has books that the retailer’s would probably never put on their shelves because, regardless of the books quality, it may just not fit into the Big Box Bookstore’s marketing plan.
An important point made by one of the persons Zaslow interviews in the article is:
“It’s true that older Internet-phobes are missing out on an incredible tool. But many tech-savvy kids never experience the library as a place for serendipitous discovery. “The library is about delayed gratification,” says Dr. Levine. “It’s about browsing through shelves of biographies. ‘Do I want Jackie Robinson? Franklin Roosevelt? What will I do when I grow up?’ The library slows you down and makes you think.”
Three weeks ago, I was helping my daughter find books on the Boston Tea Party. I showed her how to search the online catalog, how to narrow it to books at the branch we were at, and then where to find the call number on the screen and then how to locate it on the shelves.
So, we quickly located 4 or 5 books to search for and as we were pulling them from the shelves, we were constantly interrupted by all those other good books shelved next to and between the ones we searched for. We went home with more books than we expected – a common occurrence – and happier for it.
Also, ever noticed, when reading up on a topic on Wikipedia, how annoyingly poorly written some of the articles are? In my experience, I’ve found that generally, books or printed articles, are a better read than the online articles, especially like those found in Wikipedia. If you’re looking to learn about something beyond very basic, just beyond definitional, information, books tend to be a better source.
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