THE LIBRARY
"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We're down to the last couple of weeks of school and its time for all the books to come floating back into the library... Monday is the due date! Its gratifying to see how reluctantly they hand me their last book and even more gratifying to see the progress they have made in reading. Most don't fully comprehend what a "gift" the ability to read is.
Its honestly "magic" to see the transformation from the little 1st graders with their skinny sixteen page primers to the 6th graders who are truly voracious readers.
Yesterday I cataloged, leveled, spine labeled and covered fifty brand new books. They're so "pretty" in their new jackets and the look on a student's face is priceless when he/she realizes that they are the first to get to read a "new book." But the nearly hundred old books I deleted, with their tattered and ratty covers, pages falling out and spines broken, are a testament of how much our students love to read. They have, quite literally, loved them "to death."
Illustration by Scott Gustafson
