February 2022

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            Hello!

If you're reading this, you've made it through the first month of the year. Good job. Seriously. I mean it. Whether you've had a month of peace and calm or a whirlwind of a month, you've still made it to this place.

During this month, I normally talk about how this month is International Friendship Month, which it still is, unless it has been voted off the holiday list, in which case, celebrate it anyway. Who are they to tell you what to celebrate? And really, friendship should be celebrated all year round.

If you look online, you'll find that the month of February has a lot of lesser known observations. Great American Pies Month, National Bird Feeding Month, Creative Romance Month and National Snack Food Month are just some of the random holidays you can celebrate this month, but it is also National Library Lover's Month.

When I was little, my hometown library was an old one-room schoolhouse complete with a bell tower. The building is still there, but now it's the town Historical Society. The library has moved to a brand new building with decorative gates inside. It's huge compared to that one-room schoolhouse, but something in me still loves that old library. 

Before the books circulated from library to library throughout the county, we only had a certain amount of books that were always there, always a constant. Most of the time, little me got the same books out of the library. Amelia Bedelia, Scott O'dell, books on the Titanic, books on otters, books on dolphins and whales and Frances Hodgson Burnett books were among some of my frequent reads. Every once in a while, I'd journey to the adult section and pull some picture books out to take home with me.

One thing I loved was the Summer Library Reading Contest. I loved to see how many books I could read in the summer, and go to the many different events that the library hosted. One of my fondest memories was of a puppet show that me and my siblings attended. I don't remember details, just that it happened and some vague mental pictures of a queen and king puppet. It was magical.

If you have a library where you live, do you have any fond childhood memories of going there?


Until next time...

-Julia Garcia / Arysta Henry


Comments

  1. Azelyn KleinFebruary 27, 2022 at 7:21 AM

    That sounds like a lot of fun! I always enjoyed summer reading projects. I didn't really discover the joys of the library until I was in college, but I used to love going to the bookstore with my mom or pursuing book catalogs and circling the ones on my wish list.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Arysta Henry March 4, 2022 at 10:34 AM

      Bookstores are magical places! My mom knows if I go near a bookstore, it might be hours before I come out again so she gives me a time limit. 😜

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