Ontario Library Week
Can you remember the first book you borrowed from a public library? Mine was Saturday Walk by Ethel Wright. I borrowed it on a library card that was green and bigger than my current library card.
Why would I remember that!? The book or the size and colour of my card?! Because it was a magic ticket – to worlds and into lives both like and unlike my own – and I imagine that I sensed that even when I was five and my parents took me to the Alderwood Public Library. Wherever I’ve lived since, I’ve always had a library card, and although I carry as little in my wallet as I think I can get away with, my library card is always there.
Now that I have a Kobo, I can borrow e-books from the Wellington County Public Library via the Internet, even when I’m travelling. Who’d have dreamt back in the 1950s that such a thing would be possible?
If it has been a while since you’ve taken advantage of the wonderful resource that a public library is, maybe this week – Ontario Library Week – would be a good time to rediscover it!
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Kathy Stinson is the author of the classic Red Is Best and the award-winning The Man with the Violin. Her wide range of titles includes picture books, non-fiction, young adult fiction, historical fiction, horror, biography, series books, and short stories. She has met with her readers in every province and territory of Canada, in the United States, Britain, Liberia, and Korea. She lives in a small town in Ontario.
