Middle school library
The building I went to elementary school in had originally been all grades, and then was reduced to K-8. When I was 10 or 11 the school district built a new middle school for grades 6, 7, and 8. The grade above me was the first to enter the new building. The old building kept most of the books for the middle grades; they were worn, in library bindings but well-used, and all the science books were becoming outdated. So they left the fiction section in the old building and bought all new books for the new building. I had been reading for as long as I could remember. I loved being turned loose in that old library. It was there I discovered Nancy Drew, with her age ambiguity. She surely had more mobility and freedom than I did. Was she an adult? Was she a child? At 10 years old, I couldn’t tell. She drove her own car and figured out mysteries, but had to be rescued by tall handsome Ned periodically, for reasons I only vaguely understood. My big brothers were miles taller and stronger than I was, but they didn’t dress all preppy like Ned, and they didn’t have girlfriends that I noticed, until eventually they all married.
In sixth grade we were sentenced to the new building, much more handicap accessible, with one window in each classroom, that reached from floor to ceiling, only 10 foot ceilings, with drop ceiling acoustic panels, so unlike the plaster 12 to 14 foot ceilings in the old building. The library was an entirely new layout, all short shelves with space on top for putting things. You could see all the way across the room. The only tall shelves lined the walls and they sat more than half-empty. The new books were a disappointment. The school had invested in all new paperbacks of the latest Nancy Drew books, and a lot of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, along with all new science and history books with lots of color photographs and blocky graphic designs. I felt stunted; the books were age-appropriate, by someone’s definition; it wasn’t my definition. I read a few of the new Nancy Drews and tore a lot of paper to shreds for bookmarks in the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, but otherwise I needed other sources.
In desperation I read the sixth grade literature textbook cover to cover in the first two weeks. Then I looked up the books it had excerpted, and read them. They were primarily Newbery award books, generally good, but in searching for them I discovered the town library. My mother had most often taken us to the county library in a town nine miles away, because it was near her favorite grocery store. My sister and I had spent many afternoons in the park behind the library while she shopped. We loved the cannons out front, from the Grand Army of the Republic. We also enjoyed the displays of dolls from around the world, including two tiny fleas dressed in colorful threads.
Our own town had a library about a half-mile from our house, on the main street. Once I knew where it was, we stopped there periodically. That was where I discovered science fiction as an entire genre. I had read science fiction in scattered books, but the local library separated out science fiction books into their own set of shelves. I absorbed lots of scientific ideas from how they appeared in fiction. I associated science “learning” with textbooks, because that was how it was taught in school. Textbooks cut up fascinating concepts and laid them out all quiz-like, with pins and bullet points and comprehension questions. Oh how I hated answering comprehension questions! They felt like gotcha questions, traps. I had no doubt I could answer them all; my reading comprehension was always very good. But why write them out? It never occurred to me that there were people who didn’t understand the words, who needed it explained. It baffled me that some people didn’t want to learn new things. Why ever not?
