This week it was to Verona, one town over. Did you know that if you type "library" into Google maps it'll find you nearby libraries? I love living in the future.
That picture above was taken while I was standing right in the main angle of the giant window below. You can see this window from a nearby park, which is how we learned years ago that Verona had a great library. This was the first time we've been to it, though.
This looked like it was a tree with some toy dinosaurs
but it turns out that the "Gingko Biloba" is
the oldest tree in the world.
Hence the dinosaurs.
I once had an idea for a "toy library." You could join -- like how video rental stores used to be -- and then check out toys, like board games or puzzles or action figures or something, then bring them back when you were bored with them and get a new toy.
Real libraries feature a lot more toys these days. That's good. Libraries are becoming more community centers than book repositories.
Mr F does not like libraries.
He was pretty good at this one despite this entire day being not
really his cup of tea.
He mumbles and sings to himself, but he can get kind of loud sometimes. There was a
little girl who came into the castle and was
sitting in one of the alcoves trying to read, but she kept looking
worriedly at Mr F.
I finally said "Is he bothering you?"
She said "He's kind of loud."
I said "He doesn't mean to be, but would it help if we left the castle while you read?"
She nodded.
We went and hung out by Mr Bunches. About twenty minutes later she came and found us and said that we could go back to the castle and thanked us.
I feel very strongly that people should not mind when kids like Mr F get a bit loud or upset in public.
I feel equally strongly that we should not deliberately upset people, and keep in mind that having special needs doesn't mean you can do whatever you want.
Both Mr Bunches and Mr F sat in that slide for a while. I think the slight enclosure made them feel safer because it's a big library and there were lots of people there.
Whenever a little kid came by I made the boys vacate the slide for a while. (See above.)
They had these cool (possibly papier-mache) sculptures all over the kids' section.
When I was little, the kids section of the library was just a little sort of cordoned-off area
where there were kids books. These new libraries are incredible.
They had just a treasure trove of books for Mr Bunches. Mr Bunches likes ABC books, and books about concepts (colors, numbers, etc.) They had those in spades. And they set them out by subject, which is good. We went to one library once where they had kids' books sorted by author. Who knows the author of an ABC book?
There was a sort of stuffed dragon in the castle and Mr Bunches was playing knight with it for a while.
It was kind of neat: even though everyone was being sort of library-hushed, there was enough background chatter and kids and stuff that you didn't feel like you were in church. You could be quiet but didn't have to whisper. Libraries are fun again!
Book haul!
I want to live there. I want to be like those kids in the Basil E Frankweiler book and hide out in ("how do you hide out in something?") the library.
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