Make thy books thy companions.

Magnet#839 - Book worm

My friend picked this one up for me at this year's BEA. Love it - it goes with my matching mug from DCsis!

Summers were the best time of year for us growing up - for most kids it meant running around outside all day. But for us, it usually meant more time at the public library.

My parents would drop us off, and we would literally run all over the place. Now that I look back on it, basically the librarians were our babysitters and the library, our playground.

Now, sometimes that was great, sometimes not. Generally, we were pretty well-behaved bookworms - the darling little Filipino girls timidly peeping around the corners. Other times, we could get a little unruly, running around the stacks and staircases and water fountains.

But for the most part, you could find us nestled in the aisles, each in different sections of the library, reading our treasures, or finding new ones. And we each had our checklist of what sections to go through - after I outgrew the summer reading program, my favorite part was poring through the paperbacks section - looking for new authors and romances to read. Then doing the same thing through the hardcover fiction aisles. I'm glad I never discovered the joys of nonfiction there, otherwise, I truly would never have left the library.

As it was, no matter how often we'd visit the library, though, each of us would always, always, always leave with giant stacks of books to bring home - arms full of new people, places and things to discover. We'd check out so many books, it was hard, sometimes, to keep up with them.

Yep. Or, at least that's what I learned that one summer I wracked up $30 in overdue fees. Even Sonja the librarian was like, how is this even possible when you're here so often? Then she cut me a break and like brought it down to $20. Hee. Love those small-town libraries.

*Make thy books thy companions. Let thy cases and shelves be thy pleasure grounds and gardens.

- Judah ibn-Tibbon (12th century)