Library Guilt: the Seedy Underbelly of Raising a Reader (Stuff no one tells you)
Updated: 3 days ago
We’ve all heard it. You should have 500 books in your house. You should read a thousand books to your kids before kindergarten. And who among us has a few grand to throw away on crisp new hardcover books? So, yes, we “thriftbooks.com”. Yes, we “Half Price Books”. Yes, we “little free library” and “library sale” with the best of them. But there comes a day when all of us do it: we go to the library, little one(s) in tow. Our eyes fill with stars as we take in all the amazing resources. The story times! The music! The books! The preloaded educational themed tablets and kits with a thousand tiny pieces! We load ourselves with good. We are raising readers, we are super-parents, we are cultivating literacy whizzes!
But what we don’t know, what no one tells us, what I, dear reader, am telling you now, is that, as soon as those library items enter your door, as soon as the lights go out at night, something terrible, horrible, and awful happens. And it happens to all of us, no matter how innocently and hopefully these library items were obtained.
As soon as your eyes are closed, as soon as your back is turned, all the little library items you brought home will begin to creep around the house, like educational cockroaches, looking for dark, narrow spaces to hide. They seek stability and permanence, these books that have been doomed to sojourn forever in the limbo of circulation. They long to dwell forever in your home in an ever-unreachable habitat. Under the oven. Between the dryer and the wall. Behind the piano. Inside a suitcase you haven’t opened in two years. Deep, deep under the jammed flip seat in the minivan.
A few weeks later, when the circulation emails start pinging, you might be left staring at the ceiling at night, scouring your brain. “Where in the world is Animal Sidekicks? And the Berenstain Bears DVD? What could have happened to the charging base from the tablet kit?” Yes, my friends, the lingering shadow of every well-meaning parent has fallen upon you, too: Library Guilt. Awake or asleep, at home or abroad, the specters of stern-looking library ladies begin to whisper affirmations of your worst fears in the subconscious recesses of your mind.
“What a bad parent you are, to not be able to return the items you’ve borrowed!”
“You’re never gonna raise a reader, are you?”
And, the one that strikes home the most: “how could you possibly set foot in a library to borrow yet MORE books, when we all know just how capable you are of keeping track of them?”
My pathological fear of losing library items began early in childhood, back when I and my family of seven siblings would, without any breath of exaggeration, carry off 2 to 300 library items per visit. This was back when I was young and innocent to the ways of library books; but even then I had some dim awareness of their extraordinary ability to scurry off and hide themselves. Back then, I would naïvely lend some space on my library card to other siblings, who would promptly lose them, despite my fledgling attempts to control the chaos with labeled crates and my own personal checkout system in my room. Library items, library cards— it was a hopeless case. Or maybe, I wondered, maybe I was a hopeless case.
There I was, standing bashfully in front of a teenage intern at the circulation desk, paying up a dollar out of my hard-earned allowance to replace my yet-again-lost library card, and I distinctly recall perceiving at ten years old the dripping scorn in his tone as he looked at my scarred, hopeless library record, and said, “NINE replacement cards?”
From that dismal past I have risen like a literary phoenix. And here, as a gift, I bequeath to you my deepest-rooted, hardest won library knowledge:
How to be a semi-professional library-goer with kids
Aka managing lots of lost stuff with grace
Get your kids a library card
Even if they are a baby! Even if you never intend to max out your library card! Even if you never intend to lose a library book! Even if you never intend to lose many, many books and get placed on a library blacklist across multiple states! Trust me on this, friends, when the moment comes, when you stand in front of the self-checkout and your three-year old clutches “Dora in Wonderland” in their little hands, when the electronic rejection tone unexpectedly echoes in your ears, and the big red “see the librarian” banner flashes across the screen before your heartbroken toddler’s eyes, you too, will wish at that very moment that you had a backup card, perhaps belonging to your illiterate six month old baby, to whip out. You will wish that you had heeded this sage advice. Get them a library card. All of them. The more library cards, the better.
Never lose your pin number.
While you are still standing at the librarian's desk, fresh new cards in hand, grab your Sharpie or your battery-operated high-priority emergency label maker and put everyone’s name and PIN number on their card. This isn’t a debit card, folks. And repeat after me the wisdom of our ancestors: “Sharpie will wear off eventually, but label makers are forever."
Keep those cards accessible.
Put all the key ring versions on your keys. Put the big cards in lanyards and hang them up in a labeled spot in your house. Take pictures of every angle, “favorite” those pictures hard, and upload them into Google Drive. Use your trusty label maker and stick those numbers on your laptop and your Kindle reader, your headboard, your steering wheel, your coffee maker, and the lentels of your house. Why? Because for some reason, every time you want to use the most basic library service , they’ll ask you to recall off the top of your head an 18 digit number and four digit pin for four different family members, and suddenly, a wrench has been thrown into your plans. You’ll think “oh, I just need to go get my library card out of my wallet” and then some other crisis will happen and you won’t get around to it and you’ll miss the deadline to register your children for the Frog and Toad play, or you won’t be able to sign in to Hoopla to play the Encanto soundtrack during quiet time, and it will be no one’s fault but your own for not making your library number clearly accessible from every vantage point.
Corral the chaos!
Have a designated and labeled place so books can’t creep away: a bin, box, shelf, crate, or wagon, depending on your family’s size and reading propensities. My current favorite is a labeled, oversized canvas tote bag- I can throw overdue items in there and they’re out of sight, out of mind, and can be safely and easily returned.
Guard your technology.
Just skip the preloaded mp3 players unless you’re really, really good at not losing stuff. They have tiny black plastic battery covers that children love to pop off and hide in irredeemable places. No amount of masking tape helps. They just peel it off. You CAN get the preloaded learning tablets - the kind with rubber bumpers - with one important caveat: your children must never see the chargers.
A helpful visual guide to assessing the danger level of library technology You may hide them deep in a pocket of your designated library bag, if and only if you know your children will never look there. But if you ever suspect that THEY suspect there are chargers in the bag, you will need to move to classified locations of maximum security: tucked into the glove compartment when no one is looking, hidden among cleaning supplies, zipped inside a parent’s winter coat pocket, etcetera.
How to find a lost library item:
Either deep clean your car or move to a new house. Works every time.
Keep short accounts.
Lastly, you’ve tried your absolute best - you’ve designated your spot, guarded your technology, labeled everything to exhaustion- and something still comes up missing. I understand, sensitively and intimately, that you want to crawl under the table and hide and never return to the library. But my friends, this is where raising a reader requires iron character, fortitude, and endurance. You must screw your courage to the sticking point. Own up to it. Come clean. Use your whole chest, march up to that little station at the front of the library, look those truly terrifying librarians in the eye and confess the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I promise you, when you’re on the right side of the law again, you’ll sleep better.
The greatest battle, by far, is not actually keeping track of hundreds of tiny items that are trying their best to lose themselves. It’s the psychological battle against the looming, ever present library guilt. And the secret to overcoming that, is this:
No matter what your subconscious is telling you, the library ladies are on your side. Believe it or not, the library NEEDS you! The library WANTS you!
Behind the scenes, they’re trying to waive fees to make sure that people who want to use the library can use it. They’re taping up torn pages and wiping grimy tablet screens and sometimes tossing a book that’s come to the end of its lifetime— and they’re not, in their heart of hearts, grumbling that you are a horrible parent. They need the messy, grubby, real life of parents and little kids. Without you, they have no mission and no purpose.
And… if you can open your heart to believe this, you might find that they’re not really so scary after all.
I have SO much more in my heart regarding libraries- in many ways, the bane and joy of my stay-at-home mom existence - and I hope to share more with you someday, but for now, I must return to earth, back to my practical existence, and be where I am (at a library with my children, of course!). And whether or not I am currently paying a library fine or checking out with my fourth back up card, there is no need for you to know.
P.S. To help us all overcome our fear of libraries, I’ve put together some helpful affirmations and mantras for those moments when library guilt strikes hard.
Repeat after me, and write on the back of your library card if necessary:
I am not defined by my library record.
Fines can be paid.
I am courageous enough to admit that my library items have lost themselves.
I am loved and valued... by the library ladies!
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