I was talking to a librarian the other day and she laughed
when I said I thought librarians were like drug dealers. But they really are! They even target
the little kids! Get them hooked on the picture books, next thing you know the kids are
applying for library cards and mainlining Harry Potter, Divergent and TheTesting. Give it a few years and
YA just won’t give the same buzz and the kids have to move on to bigger and
bigger fiction. And that’s when
the librarians start pushing the hardcore stuff – Faulkner, Atwood, Joyce. If
you’re not careful your kid could end up reading the entire Lord of the Rings
even though there’s a perfectly good director’s extended cut blue ray back
home.
And just like pushers, librarians are extremely
open-minded. They don’t care where
you’ve come from. Rich, poor, or
in between – all library cards are the same to them. (Unless it’s an out of state card, in which case you will
have to pay the buck and get a local card.) They don’t even judge when all you want to read is Romance
novels; they just point you toward the romance section and recommend new
authors who also write in the kilt and dragon milieu. It’s a slippery slope, my friends. You go into the library
for the videos and the free internet access and the next thing you know you’re
reading and using words like “milieu.”
So, if that kind of blatant pushing of mind-expanding
education is acceptable to you, then you should probably hug the next librarian
you see. Just remember that the
VIG on those late library books is due next week...
Bethany Maines
is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales
from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.
Adorable post.
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