Why We Visit the Local Library

I grew up with lots of books around the house. My parents were pretty good at providing plenty of books for us to choose from – or so it seemed to me anyway. I loved to read and really spent hours reading new books or re-reading old favourites. Early on in the motherhood game, I decided I wanted my kids to have a similar love of reading. Before my first child’s first birthday we had been to our local library a few times to check out story time and to see what books they had.

As the years have gone on we have developed the habit of going to the library regularly. Generally, it is part of our weekly schedule – especially during the school term. The kids love going to the library and so do I for several key reasons.

I think the first and most obvious reason to visit your local library is: to join and borrow any of their books it is FREE, FREE, and FREE. Trips to the library are seriously one of the only times can I take the children somewhere that they can ask: Can I take this home? And I can say ‘yes’ 30 times before I have to say ‘no’ (a direct opposite of visiting somewhere like Target or Toys’r’us where I say ‘no’ 30 times until they wear me down).

Yours might not, but my local library is happy to take suggestions for books that you would like to read, but that they currently don’t have in their catalogue. After the kids loved ‘The Crown Affair’ so much I went online and found that it was actually a sequel to ‘What Really Happened to Humpty?’. So I jumped onto the library catalogue and they didn’t have it. I was a bit disappointed (what library has the sequel to a book they don’t have?). So I told one of the librarians and she was really great about it. She took down the details of the book, along with my details, she ordered the book and we got to be the first to borrow the book when it came in.

This leads me to my next point. While reading to my kids and providing them with a variety of literature is really important to me, so is my desire to live with less and be as environmentally aware as possible. I know I am a long way from the zero-waste and totally minimalist lifestyle I see others (on the internet) succeeding at. But I can do some things to embrace these principles, and that includes being really deliberate about the books we choose to buy and keep in the house. If I’m totally honest we currently have more books (especially poor quality books) than I would like, but I find it hard to get rid of books and gifts, so you can imagine my trouble with books that were gifts. To know that we have thousands of books available to us at the library at no cost (other than time), books that we can give back at any time, re-borrow when we want to, and books that we want to read, but will be bought for us and used by others is a really wonderful thing to me.

As I said variety is also really important to me. I want to give my kids exposure to as many different books as I can. Over the course of their lives, I want them to read: touch and feel books, board books, simple picture books, fiction and non-fiction, Australian classics as well and the newest releases and then have them graduate to short novels and then young adult books. My goal is that they will learn to appreciate and love the books that suit them, even if it means we have to read some real stinkers in the process. But really what might be a stinker to me might be the type of book my kids will love. I don’t have the disposable income to fund this kind of variety in my own home, so the library is the best way to achieve the results I want.

While I know many parents who have told me that they just cannot take their kids to story/singing time at the library, I have found that my kids love it – now. It took some time for us to really get into the swing of storytime. We had to find one that suited our routine, one that wasn’t completely packed with kids, one that had a good ratio of books to songs, and one that engaged my kids. At the moment we go to an awesome story time (which I’m not going to name for fear it will get swamped). We get there a little bit early to return old books and select our new books. The kids love the library lady and she is really great at making sure everyone is involved. The kids get to do a simple drawing to take home and we leave excited about our new books and DVDs. It can be a tough outing for me (with three kids, a pram, a book bag, etc), but it is totally worth it. When we get home, the kids eat lunch and read as many books as possible before nap time. It promotes a sense of belonging for the kids to be out and involved in their community, and it’s great for me, a SAHM, who might not get any other adult interaction that day.

For us the local library is an important part of our routine, it is a free, weekly outing in our schedule that my kids look forward to and it helps me as a parent achieve my reading goals for my kids.