Every Book in the Library
By Kyla Merwin, Communications Manager
Autumn has arrived in the Wood River Valley in a flurry of change. Leaves are turning from green to gold, students are returning to school with their packs full of books, optimism, and #2 pencils, and southbound birds are spreading their wings. With September has also come the happy annual occasion of Library Card Sign-up Month.
When my grandmother first took me to the public library in Missoula, Montana, I was agog with amazement and unmitigated joy. There were books everywhere! Books up high, books down low, thick books, thin books, grown-ups’ books, teenagers’ books, little kids’ books, books in every color of the rainbow, and books just for me.
I decided on the spot that I was going to read every single book in that library, in the whole wide world! I was too young to realize that a library is a living thing. New books arrive every day even as books are culled out of active circulation.
I took my happy little stack of books to the nice lady at the check-out counter, where I got my very first library card. For free!
I was schooled in the rules about returning them after two weeks – after which time I could check out more books! – and not eating chocolate while reading or taking my coloring crayons to the pages. Pinky swear! The one thing I do not want to lose in this life is my library card.
Albert Einstein said, “The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” He and I think a lot alike in that way.
The librarian opened each book, one by one, pulled an index card out of a little pocket inside the cover, and stamped the card with a date two weeks’ hence. And I was on my way to a world of adventures and information the likes of which I could not have otherwise imagined—from Sunnybrook Farm to Middle Earth to 13.8 billion light years across time and space.
“Lights out,” my grandmother would say, many a summer night, way past my bedtime, when she saw the light glowing under my doorway.
“Okay, I’m almost to the end of the chapter!”
Fifteen minutes later: “Lights out, Kyla.”
“One more page!” I would plea.
“Lights out…”
And on an on until I surrendered … or fell asleep.
Books have been a vital part of my life since I pulled Green Eggs and Ham off the shelf all those years ago.
I’ve had a library card in every city I’ve lived because it’s an E-ticket to adventure, entertainment, and knowledge. With my library card from The Community Library, I can listen to audio books, flip through e-reader books, and check out music CDs, films, and documentaries. I can even watch the entire Mad Men television series. Again. I can read the New York Times cover-to-cover and learn a new language (molto bene!). All free with my library card.
Oh, and I can check out real live books!
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Get a Card | Spread the Love: The Community Library in Ketchum is privately funded, so anyone from anywhere in the world can come in and get a library card. If you know someone who doesn’t have one, forward this link for a library card and a launchpad to untold adventures.
