The sweetest thing I read this week was a note from Cecilia Hogan, a reader in Tacoma, Wash. While waiting to pick up a book at her local library, she saw a 5-year-old boy applying for his first library card.
“The boy swam in excitement,” Ms. Hogan tells me, “bobbing from foot to foot, gurgling over each development the librarian devised. ‘Can you sign the back of the card?’ she asked. The boy nearly exploded. ‘You don’t have to write your whole name. How about just the first letter? A ‘Z,’ right?’ The boy took the pen from her and, after carefully executing a ‘Z,’ he added an ‘N’ and an ‘A.’ The more letters, the better, right?”
Then it was time to put the card on a lanyard — his own lanyard. “The boy was ecstatic!” Ms. Hogan adds. “It was magic as old as libraries and still possible in the world we occupy today.”
Amid all the shameless assaults on librarians– like this real-life horror story – that little boy’s delight reminds us what’s at stake and why it’s worth defending everyone’s freedom to read. […]
Sunday marks the start of Library Card Sign-up Month, a national effort to connect children with libraries and books. The annual drive started in 1987 after then Secretary of Education William Bennett said, “Let’s have a campaign. . . . Every child should obtain a library card and use it.”
If there are young people in your life, consider how you can help them get a library card and begin a transformative engagement with the world of books.
— Ron Charles, from “The Book Club” (Washington Post, August 30, 2024)
Photo: Ivo Rainha, Porto, Porto, Portugal
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