So, when you were little, were you a library dork? Are you still? (I still am, when I can get to a library...Sigh.) What children's books have you read lately, do you love still? 'fess up. You know you want to.

-- Meghan (faeriebaby@hotmail.com), March 02, 2000

Answers

I wasn't a library dork, per say... I was more of a bookstore dork. I /loved/ The Babysitters' Club, but my library didn't have them. So every month, I'd take the little money I'd managed to earn and go buy the newest book. I had this huge collection. I still remember a lot of them. Unfortuately, we loaned them to a cousin, and they never came back.. *sniff* I miss my books.

Children's books? Well, there's always the Harry Potter books. But I'm a big fan of even littler kids' books. Like Goodnight Moon. Stellaluna. The Polar Express. And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. I can name so many. I love books. Yay books.

My poor children are either going to adore me or hate me for pushing books on them.

Not that I'm planning on children anytime soon.

Yay forum.

-- Piper (piperdane@yahoo.com), March 02, 2000.

Yes I am a library dork. I live in bookstores and libraries, esp when I am upset. There is a certain solace in all those books, an escape. Haven't read any children's books lately, my sister and I always loved the Berenstein bear books though. I read Babysitter's club at the time. Dr.Suess is great. The Lorax is a Dr.Suess book, probably the last children's book I read.

-- (lilaclorax@yahoo.com), March 02, 2000.

my name is kelly and i'm a library dork. I used to go to the lib. alot when i was younger then lost interest in it until they got internet:) it was my lil sis friend who showed me how to get on the net and i haven't stoppped yet.

-- kelly mcg. (jacksfan30@aol.com), March 02, 2000.

Yeah, I guess I was and still am...

I've always thought libraries were very special wonderful places. When we were kids, our mother would drop my younger brother and me off at the library while she did the grocery shopping. I can still recall hot summer Saturdays in the quiet coolness of the library. We'd read for a while, then pick out our books, check out, and go a block or so down the hot sun-bright street to an ice cream parlor where we'd buy a coke and sit in a booth, elbows resting on the cool marble table top while we sipped our sodas and read our books until Mom would stop to pick us up.

I was especially fond of science fiction. One day (I was probably in fifth grade) I had exhausted all of the s.f. in the kids sectiion, so I asked the librarian where they kept the teenage science fiction books. She showed me. Sigh... it seems I had already read all that they had. So I went to the adult fiction section, shelved alphabetically by author, started at "A" and began looking for that little spaceship icon libraries tended to stick onto the spines of s.f. books. Asimov, Isaac. Wow! Of course, they wouldn't let me check them out on my card, you had to be in high school to check out adult books, so I had to wait for my mother to check them out for me. (By the time I was twelve or so most of the librarians knew me and would bend the rules to let me check out adult books on a children's card.)

It was great fun to become a parent and bring my kids to the library. I started bringing my first born to the library for children's story hour when he was two years old, every week... I did the same with my younger children as well. Loved reading to them. I can still recite pages of Dr. Seuss (just suppose / you had no nose / you could never smell a rose / or pie / or chicken a la king / you could never smell a single thing)... That was strictly from memory and the child who loved that story is thirty-one years old (whereas my "babies" are in high school... a freshman and a senior). They are readers, although in this video and internet world, they don't read the way I did when I was a kid and they don't frequent the public library for recreatinal reading much anymore... but my son will devour anything by Orson Scott Card while my daughter tends to prefer books with lots of dragons and elves and such.

I don't get to read kids books much anymore and I really would like to try this Henry Potter series... I wonder if they're out in paperback yet? Jim

-- Jim (jimsjournal@yahoo.com), March 03, 2000.

Am definitely a book addict. Alwaysa have one with me. Average 6-8 from the library every 3 weeks. Bets thing i can do now is request books online and then have them waiting to be picked up. So glad they got out of the dark ages. Reading, sports, etc. You need all to be a well-rounded person imho.

-- Tim (hermant@olin.wustl.edu), March 16, 2000.

I was a huge library dork when I was a kid.I was a huge dork in general.

I used to read all the books on mythology, especially greek and norse. I would also read stuff about King Arthur and then fantasy books. Yes, I was the nerdy kid that started playing Dungeons and Dragons when he was eight. I mean, I'm cool now and everything .

I have a great appreciation for nerddom. I am totally turned on by anyone who is really smart and really into what they do. I have a huge crush on this girl I know who is a welder and going to school for engineering because she is so into engineering and she is such a dork.

-- David Grenier (retro@retrogression.com), March 22, 2000.

I lived in the library when I was a kid. I swear I read all the books there were in the kids' section, especially anything having to do with dogs or horses. I read all the Walter Farley books, all the Dorothy Lyons, all the Albert Peyson Terhune. As I started to get older, I moved into books about kids growing up and getting jobs. I remember Cherry Ames and (oh, who was that other nurse series?).

Now I don't visit the library as much, but I buy w-a-y too many books. I read adventury and/or medical mysteries like Dick Frances, Patricia Cornwell, Robin Cook and the like.

I read some science fiction, but mostly because David Gerrold ("The Trouble with Tribbles" guy) is a good friend of mine and he makes me.

I always have a book with me whenever I go anywhere, and that way I never mind having to wait anywhere. (In fact, I kind of look forward to delays.)

-- Bev Sykes (basykes@dcn.davis.ca.us), April 01, 2000.

Library dork you betcha. Momma was taking me to Decker's Library in Denver before I could read and picked out books to read to me. By the time I could read I spent a lot of great many, good times there. I was an only child and got a lot of education from books as well as pleasure, and the library had a vaulted ceiling with the wooden beams showing, a huge fireplace at the end of one wing large enough to have a bench on each side, inside. Land Of Enchantment even though I was in Colorado instead of New Mexico my Land Of Enchantment was at Decker's Library.

Now days I make an occasional visit to the branch library near where I live but am almost a resident at The Tattered Cover bookstore. A marvelous store, run in a wonderful way by the owner, Joyce Meskis. I think the only amenity they don't have there is a hospital.

My favorite time passing books now are usually by, Faye Kellerman, Jonathan Kellerman, Patricia Cornwell or Tony Hillerman. The serious stuff is whatever is of interest to me at the moment, I read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and gained an understanding of just how bad the old times were. I have a curious mind and can be found between the pages of almost anything.

-- Denver doug (ionoi@webtv.net), June 16, 2000.

I was a major library dork when I was a kid. I wanted to be a librarian. I could've lived in a library ((well, I could now too, but you get it)). Kids books I've read lately? Anything by Astrid Lindgren. Her books beat everything.

-- Anna (bubble@mbox301.swipnet.se), July 27, 2000.