Kids, Craft and Chaos

Late one night in one of those random conversations that you have with your friend, you know the ones? The ones where you have the best ideas. Where there is nothing you cannot do. Yeah, one of those. One of those ideas that in the cold light of normality and sanity you laugh, and wonder what on earth you were thinking. Except, somehow the message from normality didn't get through.

Neither did the questions "But why?" and "What's the point". And so the grand Library Plan evolved.

You see, my local area has 8 libraries spread over the district. For a perfectly good reason I visited three in one day the other week. It was then mentioned that even though she used to work for Library Services for many years she had never been to all of them. Perhaps we could visit them all in one day? We could make a proper challenge of it we said. Take out a book in every one we thought... and so the seed had been planted.

So now you know kind of why, suspend your disbelief at my insanity and accept that this is a GOOD THING. At 10am Kateri arrived at my house and by 11am we were safely ensconced in the first of our libraries...

All of the libraries are very different- some are in mobern new purpose built buildings, some are in purpose built but Victorian buildings and some are in buildings that were never intended for Libraries. All have their personal charm, even those in desperate need of renovation. I love my local library- the staff are friendly they know me and my kids- but I loved wandering around all of them looking at their displays and in one case a little nook with a TV showing the news.

The girls really got into the event- they loved that they had a card that worked in all of the libraries. As soon as we arrived in any library, off they scampered looking for the kids section. There were big ones, little ones and the girls enjoyed everyone. Lexie is still stuck in the "I love Rainbow Magic" stage, I've long ago given up trying to dictate their reading having decided that if I encourage them just to read then they will enjoy reading. Reading "good books" can come later, and actually, they tend to try new things from time to time. Charlotte is more interested in graphic novels and comic books as well as non-fiction. Minnie is still very eclectic, as a 4 year often tends to be!

They loved their giant stacks of books. And now (about 2 weeks later) most of these have been read and returned and new ones chosen and borrowed.

I thought after the first couple of libraries I might struggle to find something interesting to select, that I might have exhausted my interests by library four. At this point it was probably a good thing I was with Kateri, although we have similar tastes there are massive divergencies. So off I went to the graphic novel section... and ended up with the book for our August book challenge.

I wandered around and enjoyed looking at lots of different books. It isn't any different from a book shop I guess except it's a whole lot cheaper to take a chance on something new, something unusual or just something silly. Kater borrowed a handfull of children's books and read them to us while in the car. At one point it was a touch on the dangerous side as I tried not to a a) cry while laughing and b) not look at the pictures as I tried to go around a roundabout.

And so her's my stack... books for fun, one to make me cry, one to indulge my Olympic obsession and another for the Paralympics, some for a potential holiday, some new things to try and poetry and pictures.

So yes it was crazy, silly idea but I can't think of a better way to spend a day off than with my girls and best friend looking at books. And do you know what? Go give your local library (or libraries) a go, you might be amazed by what you find. In this time of recession and cuts I can still see the need for libraries, that they have so much to offer communities and individuals. We will all be the poorer if we lose our libraries, and our librarians.

{image from here}

On that note, my favourite Librarian wrote a much more detailed (epic?) set of posts on the Great Library Adventure.