Haiku #26 A little walk to the library...

When I was a kid, I remember going to the Bookmobile.  What was the Bookmobile?  It was this weird carpeted van/camper that was filled with books parked in the grocery store parking lot and my mom used to take me over there often to pick out library books.

My mom and dad read like CRAZY.  I remember always seeing stacks of books by my mom and dad's side of the bed.  From mysteries to Lord of the Rings, to anything by Ray Bradbury.  Then, when the diabetes made my dad's eyes too blind to read well, he switched to listening to books on tape.  The Library for the Blind would send us green box after box, filled with tapes and tapes and tapes of books. My mom even volunteered for the library reading books so once in a while my dad could hear her reading to him.  For Christmas a few years before my dad passed away, I recorded one of his favorite books,  The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and gave it to him to be put on his ipod.

The truth about me is that while I liked reading, I was a SLOW reader.  I read things and then got stuck on a phrase or image and re-read it over and over...trying to truly picture it in my mind.  I loved books enough that I did become an English major, but I found my nitch in poetry. I was encouraged to read and digest poems slowly!!! It was heaven on earth for me.

Now, that I have my own kids, my 6 yr old is diving into books herself and though it has been slow, she is doing great.  But, I LOVE that my girls love going to the library.  We spend at least one day a week walking the aisles of books and picking out anything we can find, including DVDs the girls have never seen.  It is a serious haunt for moms with young kids.

Since it is easy for me to put off reading for other things, I started a goal of reading a book a month. I know that sounds so lame, but for me and my life, that is reasonable. Currently I am walking the aisles of Children's paperback books.  I can't swallow badly written young adult fiction anymore and adult fiction these days is either too depressing, explicit, or too ridiculous.  So, I tend to live in the good stories written for 10-12 year olds.

We hit the library today and left with fistfuls of books and a copy of Reading Rainbow from 1982 that my 6 yr old picked out. I distinctly remember watching this episode on PBS when I was 4.  Classics never die. You have to love the library!

The Library
by Kate Cowan

Colored, inscribed spines,
leaning right collectively-
each a bright new door.