Posted on January 22, 2021 at 12:35 PM by Genesis Gaule
The first memory that I have of a library was when I was about three years old. When I was three, my mom would take me to Storytime at our local library in Spokane, Washington. I remembered I loved going because of the other kids that were there and the enthusiastic way the librarian read.
When I got older I graduated from Storytime and was moved to Activity Time. We would make crafts and read books and I still really enjoyed going. Every time after Activity Time was over I remember going to the kid’s reading section and looking around at all of the books, picking out a few. One thing I remember is that I always brought home a Where’s Waldo book. They were my favorite! I would look at them with my little sister and we would work diligently at finding all of the characters before we had to return the book.
The library was only a few blocks away from our house, so we went there quite often. I knew where all of my favorite books were on the shelf and was always looking for more. When I found the books I wanted, I would help my younger siblings--who weren’t as enthusiastic about reading as I was--find books that I thought they would like. Once we were done, all four of us walk around the library to find my mom, who was often in the fiction section looking for books as well, so I could tell her we were done.
Then like a mother and her ducklings, we go to the front desk to check out our books. I must have been pretty small or the desk really tall because I remember having to stretch on my tippy toes to look over the counter. One of the most anticipated parts of the trip to the library was the stamp that the librarians would put on the back of our hands. It could be a smiley face, an apple, a star--the possibilities were endless! And to a bunch of little kids, that was pretty exciting.
I would walk out of the library with armfuls of books and a stamp on my hand with the biggest smile on my face. Knowing that I would be staying up that night reading until I could no longer hold my eyes open (which I did fairly often). I loved going to the library. Now I get to work in a library being surrounded by books all of the time. And that is my first memory of a library.