Monday, May 3, 2010

Reading My Library


To celebrate reaching 100 books in the Support Your Library Challenge, I'm starting a long-running goal of reading a book from each shelf of my library. P and I paced about during their party this weekend to set the parameters. Reference books don't count. Neither do audio books or movies. I'll start in the kid's side, with picture books, move through chapter books, Early Readers, and biographies, then come back on the nonfiction side, which wraps around to Young Adult on the tall people side. I'll move around on the wall, then come back through the stacks, so alternate fiction and nonfiction for comfortable pace changing.

P think this is an insane ambition, but he is humoring me by helping with the picture books. We only did one case, since it wasn't an official library day, and then we read them all this weekend. Clearly I can pick up the pace, at least until the books go over 32 pages.
  • A Bear and His Boy, Sean Bryan. Delightful rhymes and pictures drive this book about a bear who wakes up with a boy on his head. We enjoyed the list in the front, and then checking off his activities during the day (although the list wasn't in chronological order!).
  • Another Important Book, by Margaret Wise Brown. We were both hoping for another self-referential book, so this charming book about growing up from one to five was a bit of a disappointment.
  • My Special Day at Third Street School, Eve Bunting. This book made up for our meta-textual disappointment. It's the story of an author visit, with a child suggestion she write a book about the visit, and this is the book! Except it isn't; the author's name is different and the dedications don't match the ones described in the story. So it's a book about itself, except it isn't! We both like that kind of silliness.
  • Otis, Janie Brynum. The pig on the cover drew me to this book, which is about a pig with a cleanliness fetish. His parents assure him he'll learn to like mud, but he doesn't agree. I worried about which way the moral would go for a few pages, but he learns to be happy and clean.

1 comment:

Birgit said...

I remember as a 13-14 yr old deciding I was going to read my way through every book in the library which my librarian thought a charmingly not very possible thought until I'd made my way through 6 or 7 stacks and was headed towards to the horrible Nurse Cherry series and bodice-ripper romance sections. She headed me off at the pass which to this day still makes me a little peeved that I coulda been a contender but for her.... :) Good luck on your quest!