WRITING PROMPT

What My Library Means to Me

My personal collection of books

My first book

One of my earliest memories was receiving a Little Golden Book named Sooty. I was six. Then I lived with my grandparents for 4 years. I never saw them read a book, but they did read the newspaper. I don’t remember receiving another book until I was ten, Heidi’s Children. I hadn’t read Heidi or Heidi Grows Up.

At that same time, I inherited a stepbrother. He was very clever, wore glasses, topped his class, and always had his head in a book or a Look and Learn magazine.

Primary school

We didn’t have a library at primary school. We had class sets of Danger Patrol and Sea Change, all covered with plain brown paper. (It’s no wonder my favourite subject was Children’s Literature when I was studying to become a teacher. It was a whole new world to me! I still love reading children’s books!)

High school library

We moved to Townsville for me to start high school. I knew no one so would hang out in the library at lunch. I didn’t own any books apart from Sooty and Heidi’s Children but I devoured those high school library books. Georgette Heyer and Neville Shute were two of my favourite authors. I still have a few well-read Neville Shute titles.

My personal library

My personal library began when I married, started teaching, and had a baby pretty much all at the same time. To encourage my third graders to read, I bought books for them and kept them on a little homemade bookshelf in my classroom. I painted it orange. I still own most of those books. My children read them and now I’m giving them to my grandson to read as he grows up.

I also started buying reference books both for adults and children. I had a wonderful set of science books answering questions children ask, Why is the Sky Blue? I now regret giving them to my ex’s grandchildren. I would have loved Caelin to have had them.

When we had our first house built, we had a library. We had beautiful glass-fronted timber bookcases, none of which I now own. I’m not sure what happened to them. When I left that marriage, I took my books with me, but not the cases. I bought high pine shelves for my books but have never again had a dedicated room as a library. It’s always been a converted garage or just a garage as I have now.

I started buying books on a regular basis… every time I went grocery shopping. My collection grew until 2002, when I had 56 boxes of books to take from that marriage. The removalists had never seen so many boxes of books!

The culling starts

Four years ago, I started culling my books. I had class sets of learning to read books that my company did not want to be returned when I was made redundant. I have given a lot of those to a school in Vanuatu. I have given most of the military and war books to my brother, and have given some of my memoirs to Keeley, whose thesis was a family memoir. True stories of an author’s childhood are my favourites and I have a penchant for those set in Russia, China, Ireland, or Scotland as well as Australia. I have a whole bookcase dedicated to those.

Caelin’s Library

I’m so pleased I didn’t get rid of my books when I downsized — they are my babies — and I now have them to pass on to my grandson who I’m pleased to report is already into reading. As you can see, he pulls his sensory board books from the bottom shelf, opens them up, and feels the pages. The books on the second shelf are ones I’ve kept — some of them for more than 50 years! Make Way for Ducklings is one of those.

Don’t you love his bookcase? It has four sides and swivels on a base to be able to access all of the books easily. My books have become my family heirloom.

Here is Ellie Jacobson’s prompt.

and here is CARMEN F MICSA’s flash fiction.

If you enjoy writing to a prompt, try this one. Karen Schwartz, Barb Dalton 🇺🇦, Jennifer Dunne, estow76, Allison Ditmer, Katie Michaelson and anyone else who’d like to try this prompt.