Some people have Valium. I have reading.

by Mrs. Readerpants

On this pre-Thanksgiving weekend, some asshole stole my husband’s identity and gained access to our checking account on the very day we both got paid. With thousands missing from our bank account, I really need to express my thanks for a gift my parents gave me that really helps divert my attention from this financial nightmare.


While I haven’t had a terribly difficult life, I did not grow up in the lap of luxury, either. As latchkey kids of blue-collar parents with paychecks stretched to their limits every month, my sisters and I know what it is like to wear the same pair of pants every day, to do our laundry at the local Laundromat every Sunday, or to wash our hair in the sink because the hot water heater has been broken for months. We couldn’t afford a TV or air conditioning or a car with a complete floorboard, but our parents gave us more reading enrichment than even the priciest reading program could possibly provide: they read to us.


All my life, I’ve read to escape stress. A love for reading got me through arguments with friends, my parents’ divorce, my first heartbreak, college term papers, my interminable pregnancy bed rest requirement, and now, serious frustration with our bank. Reading helps me relax and soothes me in a way nothing else can, and I thank both of my parents for instilling in me a passion for books that can help me get me through anything.


For me, reading with my parents created lasting memories that bonded us and instilled a lifelong passion for reading that can never be taken away. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of my mother reading to my sisters and me at bedtime. We would all pile into my parents’ bed (their room was the only one with window-unit AC) and surround ourselves with library books. I don’t know how many books she read each night, but I never remember Mom saying “no” or “last one” when her daughters requested more stories. She read with tireless enthusiasm, even though she worked full-time and must have been exhausted by the end of the day.


I still smile when I recall the time she read the line “How that BUMP made us JUMP” in The Cat in the Hat, and the entire bed fell down when we did the JUMP part. How I listened breathlessly as the Black Stallion trampled the rattlesnake on the beach. How I wondered if, like Pippi, we too could fit a horse on our front porch. How when my sister was learning to read, she read A Great Day for Up so many times I still have much of the story memorized. And whenever we complained of boredom, my mom would, without fail, suggest we “go curl up with a good book.”


While my mom read us adventure stories and fairy tales, my dad gave us humor and poetry. When I was a little girl, my dad could do no wrong. He loved to read, particularly books about the Civil War, and took us to the public library regularly. My dad was also great with sound effects. He would cackle like a witch while my mom read us the story of Baba Yaga or talk like the duck when she read The Ugly Duckling.

Dad would constantly quote poetry, especially Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe, and Carl Sandburg. I can still remember the exact moment in 6th grade when we read Annabel Lee in language arts and I discovered that my dad did not just make those words up! I can also remember flipping ahead in my reading textbook to find the poetry unit and see what other poems I had heard all my life from my dad. (Apparently, he didn’t write The Road Less Traveled, either.) Twenty-five years later, my dad and I still love to quote poetry and try to stump each other over what line comes next.


So thanks, Mom, for sharing Pippi Longstocking, Hansel and Gretel, The Black Stallion, and Dr. Seuss with us. I couldn’t tell back then, but I now understand that you had to be tired after a long day of life insurance paperwork and cleaning up after three energetic little girls. Though you were never a big reader yourself, our reading time with you was priceless and lasting.


And thanks, Dad, for integrating classic poems into everyday conversation, long before I ever even heard about them in school. For teaching me how to make a story come alive for your grandchildren through crazy voices and sound effects. I still think you hung the moon, and I still sniffle every time I hear about sickly little Annabel Lee and her fairytale “kingdom by the sea.”

Mrs. Readerpants: The Place to Be

by Mrs. Readerpants

It’s 8AM, and I hear them coming. Their pounding footsteps rattle the stairs, and their excited voices fill the empty hallway. While school doesn’t officially start for forty more minutes, our library will be hopping this morning, just as it is every morning before school. The library doors swing open, and here they come! My morning library babies. Smiling, talking, laughing, excited to be at school. Excited to be in the library.

Morning library kids come in for all kinds of reasons. Some are completing school projects on library computers. Some are there to checkout new books because they already read the ones they got yesterday. They are there to read magazines, buy poster board, or login to Goodreads. Many simply want to hang out with their library-loving friends and avoid sitting in the noisy cafeteria until school starts. Others just want to talk to my aide or me, knowing we will listen to whatever they have to say. Whatever their reason for coming in, my morning library kids are a special group. From the tiniest sixth grader to the tallest eighth grader, they are a motley group from different grade levels and different backgrounds. They are boys and girls. Boisterous and quiet. Honors students and special ed. Yet despite their vast differences, our morning library time has developed its own unique culture. I once commented that they are like a family, and the kids agreed.

While mornings, lunches, and after-school are our busiest times of day, we know many students are also asking their teachers to send them. In addition to our scheduled classes and the computer lab, we also see anywhere from 10-30 additional students, sent by their teachers, each class period. The teachers repeatedly tell me that their students are constantly asking if they can go to the library during class. Clearly, the library is the place to be.

As a middle school librarian, I like to compare myself with Oprah Winfrey. When Oprah started her book club in 1996, people who never really read much at all suddenly became obsessed with the books she recommended. When Oprah raved about a book, people bought it, read it, passed it on. Like Oprah, I have huge power within my school to influence my students’ perception of reading. It never takes long for my newer students to figure out that if they need a book recommendation, my aide and I are the ones to see. Teachers routinely send us students who don’t like reading, in the hopes that we can find something they will want to read. Like Oprah, it seems my aide and I have this magical power to get our students excited about books. As soon as we say we loved a book, students are clamoring to get their hands on it. 

But here’s the thing—we have no magic. Instead, we have real smiles, a sincere love for our kids, and an enormous dose of enthusiasm for the books we read and love. I have the world’s most amazing library aide, who loves reading almost as much as she loves working in the library. We both read the books in our library constantly, and we passionately talk up reading and books every single chance we get. We know our books well, and we take the time to get to know our students. We go out of our way to learn their names, to ask them questions, to notice when we don’t see them for a few days. We connect with our kids on a personal level, and constantly remind them that we really do care about them.

So while our audience is on a far-smaller scale than Oprah’s, I know how Oprah must have felt when the books she loved became favorites of readers worldwide. Oprah’s Book Club could never have been so successful without her genuine passion for her booklist. Enthusiasm is contagious, and it is vital for today’s teens to see the adults in their lives truly excited about reading. In my library, I know my aide and I inspire our students to fall in love with reading, to wonder what all the fuss is about. When I really loved a certain book and talk it up with a few classes, that book stays checked out for months. Our library lunch passes are always totally gone by second period each day, and one student recently went so far as to “buy” a lunch pass from another student by purchasing him cookies at lunch. Many students have told us that they never liked to read until they came to our school. Our students’ fervor for reading quickly catches on with other students, and our library has become “the place to be” on our campus. Looking around our crazy, crowded, sometimes-quite-noisy library, my aide and I know we built that community. We made that happen.

About Mrs.ReaderPants

While she was never a Morning Library Kid in middle school, Mrs.ReaderPants probably would have been interested in trading cookies for a library lunch pass if the opportunity had presented itself. Thankfully, as the school librarian, she gets to be in the library all day AND eat her cookies, too.