I just want to say thank you for leading me to such a wonderful article.
Here’s my take on it as recently FBd.
"What a truly brilliant, brilliant article.
"One big take-away from this (among many others) was the line “As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.” Yay for escapism through reading, and yay for public libraries!
"And then this: “They were good librarians. They liked books and they liked the books being read. They taught me how to order books from other libraries on inter-library loans. They had no snobbery about anything I read. They just seemed to like that there was this wide-eyed little boy who loved to read, and would talk to me about the books I was reading, they would find me other books in a series, they would help. They treated me as another reader – nothing less or more – which meant they treated me with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect as an eight-year-old.”
“I choked up when I read that, because it exactly mirrors my own experience as a kid learning my way around my local library. Thank you (probably posthumously!) to all the lovely librarians who encouraged me to read everything available back in the late 60s.”
