Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here) and orderable at all bookshops.
*
“What kind of adventure?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise,” I volleyed back.
Being five years old, Maya loves adventures and loves surprises and so her answer naturally was “Yes!!!” with three exclamation marks, at least, perhaps even two more to match her age.
Getting Maya into her child’s car seat was an adventure in itself, for today’s contraptions require squirming into harness straps, buckling buckles, then tightening, re-tightening, and re-re-retightening the straps as if trying to secure Houdini in a straightjacket against escape. Apollo astronauts readying for liftoff in their capsules surely fastened up more easily.
Maya’s and my rocketship was headed to the moon—or to Mars, or elsewhere in space; to anywhere on earth or even Middle-earth of the hobbits; to Wonderland or Oz; to any place a book, and one’s imagination, can take you for we were headed to the library.
Maya is already a regular patron at her local library in the Bay Area, but has been denied a library card there for being too young. “Stuff and nonsense!”—as Wonderland’s Alice tells the queen—is my thought on that rule. I got my first library card the summer before starting kindergarten and still clearly and fondly remember checking out “Where the Wild Things Are” that magical day. Just as my mom took me then, I now took Maya’s mom to get her library card at age 5.
I wish you could have seen dear Maya’s face, radiating with excitement like it was Christmas morning come early in June, when Veronica, the librarian on duty at the Hill Road branch, cheerfully handed her a “Ventura County Library” plastic library card. To Maya’s eyes, its childlike artwork of green mountains and a blue sea beneath a yellow sun was as beautiful as a Monet painting.
“It’s my very own?” Maya asked, her tone an amalgam of disbelief and awe. Veronica smiled and said “yes” and then bent down when Maya reached out to give her a thank-you hug. Again, I wish you could have seen it.
And, oh how I wish also you could have seen my granddaughter sign the back of her “very own” library card, writing M-a-y-a with the careful penmanship of John Hancock signing the Declaration of Independence, albeit in small printed letters not oversized cursive.
Studies show that children who grow up going to the public library will have greater literacy, and numeracy, in adulthood. Public libraries, invented in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, also foster in children a lifelong love of not just reading, but of learning, no small things.
That is all well and good and important, but Maya’s delight as she zoomed off like a rocketship to search the shelves for a handful of books to bring home during her Ventura visit said far more than any studies or statistics can.
And when Maya was unable to find any of the Owl Diaries series, currently her favorite books followed closely by the Unicorn Diaries, she learned a valuable lesson: ask a librarian for help. Quick as two shakes of a unicorn’s tail, Veronica guided Maya to a distant, but low and reachable, shelf with a selection of Owl Diaries. Just like that, a frown of frustration became a big smile.
Indeed, it was a big day for a little girl. For me, too, for in her glowing face I could again see my adult daughter’s 5-year-old glee and also relive my own long-ago childhood adventure, such is the magic of a library card.
* * *
Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.
*
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.