The Changing Media Center, or Good-Bye to the Library Dragon

Once upon a time, many school libraries were guarded by fierce dragons. Students who dared enter at all scurried in, clutching their library books to their chests, and approached the circulation desk with dread in their hearts. One "Shusssshhhhh!" from the dragon would leave a blazing scorch on their heads. Tossing their books quickly into the book drop, they fled into the shelves, all the while casting nervous glances toward the dragon behind the desk who was engaged in applying ugly orange tape to the spines of the books stacked in front of her.

Okay, I exaggerate slightly.

My first school librarian, Mrs. Lippman, in Columbus, Georgia, was no dragon. She made me feel welcome from my first visit to the school library as a first-grader. She read Dr. Seuss stories to our class and introduced me to the Grinch. What I loved best about going to the library was choosing my own book. There are not many choices first-graders get to make on their own, and the opportunity to select what I would soon be learning to read was always thrilling.

But I know from having attended other schools that not all librarians were as welcoming as Mrs. Lippman. Some guarded their collection like treasure, which I can understand to a point because I too think books are invaluable. However, the generation of librarians I belong to realizes the value of the books comes from what they mean to our students. If you have a perfectly maintained book collection but no check-outs, I don't think you have a library.

I hope students and teachers who enter the library at BHL feel wlecome. We have worked hard to update the collection and to actually get those books in students' hands. You can help by returning library books whenever you find a stray one. And I promise a large pizza to the first student who ever hears me "Shussshhh!"

Why I read

I think one reason I read is because I can be kind of lazy. Now there's bad-lazy, like not doing anything, and there's smart-lazy. I think I fall into the smart-lazy category.

I found that reading helped me work smarter at school. So I had to do less work.

Here's how I think that worked: I liked to read stories. So I read a lot of them. That meant I did pretty well in reading class without having to work at it. In language arts class, I did well too. Why? Because reading all those stories made it easier for me to see without thinking too hard where the mistakes were in a sentence. I saw sentences in stories all the time that were well written. So I could tell what wasn't written correctly. It also helped me write my own sentences without as much effort as it would have taken if I'd not read all those books full of well written sentences.

I had to work a little harder in social studies. But it helped that I read because I saw history - which is a lot of what social studies is - as a kind of stories. A lot of stories, in fact. When I thought of it as stories, it was easier to learn.

This left me with more time to spend on the subjects I had to REALLY work at which were science and math. When I was a girl, those were the subjects people assumed boys were the best at, so maybe that's why I wasn't as quick in those classes. Fortunately that's changing now. But anyway, because I didn't have to spend as much time on the other subjects, I could work on my science and math to the point that I could, if I concentrated, get an A. Or a solid B, at least.

So that's how reading because I'm lazy ended up helping me in school after all.

Why do you read?