School Libraries

I know I said we’d look at bookstores, but I don’t want to bypass the school libraries from when I was growing up. They were an important source of books for young Me and I’d hate to skip over them. I don’t much remember the library from my first two years of elementary school, but I do recall the one at the school where I went for four years from third grade through sixth. Our librarian was a wonderful lady named Mrs. Griggs, who also had the distinction of substitute teaching for my dad at the junior high on the day he was out for an important event (my birth). The library seemed big to me at the time, but I’d bet it wasn’t much bigger than two classrooms put together. I was a wean (the Irish term for child seems appropriate here) with a lot of energy. I remember checking out books on presidents, football, and baseball, reading the same books multiple times. When I moved to junior high, the size of the library expanded dramatically. This is probably where I started reading a little more fiction, and got a dose of science fiction from there as well as the public library. Our city had a mid-high, covering ninth and tenth grades, which is where I really dove into my Louis L’Amour phase (still going on, by the way). I checked out all his books over the course of those two years, most of them at least three times. By the time I reached senior high, I bought more books than I checked out and the library at my school during junior and senior years remained mostly a place for research during classes. I continued to frequent the city library and found SF books there that I couldn’t at school or the bookstores. I guess you could say that wherever there were books, there was I. School libraries were essential to my access to books, especially in a small town. I’m grateful to the people who worked there and shared their love for books with me.