Happy National Library Week!

Have you been to every library branch in your local library system? Why not?

Here, I’ll be reminiscing about my journies to libraries near and far, reading LOVE IN THE LIBRARY, and discussing the trials and tribulations of walking students to the library for a low-budget field trip.

Happy National Library Week.

A place to explore: Every Library in the Sno-Isle System

The rainy days of January are always perfect for curling up indoors and making literary goals of reading 100 books or whatever. But every spring I start itching to leave the realm of cozy couches and take my literary goals on the road. 

April’s National Library Week provides the perfect inspiration. 

Several years ago, I made a personal quest to visit all 24 branches of my local library system. As a denizen of the Pacific Northwest, this involved islands, ferry rides, and roads toward mountain passes. I even made a map:

Picture and photo by Jenna Vandenberg

At first glance, literary goals and library travel goals seem to have a lot in common: cozy couches, reading glasses, book lamps, and shushed environments. In reality, the two goals are nothing alike.  

Visiting libraries is the opposite of bookish escapism. Reading brings you to 16th-century Scottish villages, Hollywood studios, or cyborg-populated cities in a slightly futuristic Japan. Libraries show you exactly where you are, and who is in that space with you. There is no better way to critically examine the realities of your community than to visit libraries.

I packed up my young children and set off toward the farthest reaches of my library system. The Darrington branch, up into the foothills of the North Cascades Mountains, is a 90-minute drive from my house in the northern suburbs of Seattle. It seemed sacrilegious to go all the way up to Darrington and not go hiking, so I packed snacks in my hiking backpack and took the kids on a muddy jaunt along the Boulder River trail before hitting the library. 

The library/town hall/city clerk’s office has been renovated since my visit and now features hunter-green walls, evergreens etched into sliding glass doors, and windows framing the mountain faces. But when I was there a few years ago, all I remember was the warmth. It was the perfect cozy space to warm up after a hike. The Granite Falls library, also tucked into the foothills, seems specifically designed to welcome hikers, with warm colors and forest paraphilia exuding from every cozy reading nook. 

The library branches in the mountains reflect their surrounding towns: quiet and sparsely populated. There is no one for librarians to shush, no noisy gaggle of teenagers or toddlers to smile fondly at. The Darrington library featured just one or two patrons quietly tapping away at reference computers. Here, you don’t have to read NORTH WOODS to imagine a lonely house among wild apple trees, you can look outside and practically see it.

The Sultan and Monroe libraries and classic small-town, Main Street libraries. The mountain views are a little more distant, and the paintings are of farmlands instead of forest scenes. Instead of hiking trails immediately adjacent, these libraries are surrounded by breweries, drive-in restaurants, small-town playgrounds, history museums, and antique shops. 

Photo by Jenna Vandenberg

The Snohomish Library is the crowning jewel of the Sno-Isle system, with its towering windows, fireplace, vibrant paintings, and vaulted wood panel ceilings. This small town library is usually bustling, especially around storytime. Curl up on a couch in front of the fire, give BABBITT a re-read, and guess which of the doting moms are married to their childhood next-door neighbors.  

Of all the libraries I visited, the one that surprised me the most was a mere five miles away from my house, in a town I’d never been in. It’s strange, how you can live somewhere for years and have no idea what is just around the corner. 

The town of Briar is tucked into a point where two freeways cross. This description likely conjures up clangorous sounds and the smell of diesel fuel, but shouldn’t. The freeways are hidden by sound barriers overgrown with foliage. There is no town exit to either I-5 or I-405, which means that Briar is on the way to absolutely nowhere. The freeways make the town unable to grow, so it’s a quiet, hidden-away community where few outsiders have reason to venture.

This is why visiting all the branches in your local library system is worthwhile: finding gems like Briar. 

When the kids got out of the car at this library, my youngest sniffed the air and wondered if we were going camping. She smelled woodsmoke from a nearby chimney. My eldest daughter was thrilled to spot a horse and wondered if we were at a petting zoo. Nope. We were a few miles away from a sprawling suburban mall. You just wouldn’t know it. 

After checking out a stack of picture books we went to a cozy pizza restaurant with a lattice ceiling and paintings of grapes on the walls. Everyone seemed to know each other. I felt a million miles away from home in the best way possible. It reminded me of a line in Elizabeth Gilbert’s BIG MAGIC where she wrote about how a new realization was “like one of those dreams where you discover a previously unknown room in your house and you have the expansive feeling that your life has more possibility to it than you thought it did.” 

What else would I discover, right around the corner? 

Or right across the water. 

There are five Sno-Isle library branches on Whidbey Island, a long skinny squiggle of an island that extends about thirty miles, running (roughly) parallel along the mainland. Tucked into a curve of Whidbey is Camano Island, where another library can be found. 

I caught an early morning ferry to the island. I paid the toll, waited in the loading area, and was waved aboard by a gruff man in a reflective vest. He pointed emphatically to the spot my front tires needed to reach, trying to cram as many vehicles as possible onto the boat. I pulled my parking brake and dashed out of the car. I like to be up on the deck before the fog horn blows and the ferry pulls away from the dock. Salty air, barnacle-encrusted pylons, and scanning the waters in hopes of spotting Seattle’s J pod of orcas are part of the experience. 

Photo by Jenna Vandenberg

While the mountain libraries are forest-themed, here on the island, everything is nautical. Ships, ropes, pictures of fish scales, and seashells mix amongst the books and rows of computers. Lighthouses are painted on the walls, and the expansive window views showcase the Salish Sea. 

The island libraries are charming, but it’s hard to get a vibe from the patrons. I’ve never been an islander, so it’s tough to know how locals feel about us mainlanders, here to gawk at the decorative anchors and go on whale-watching tours. Do they wish we would leave or do they welcome the tourist dollars?  

I felt a little guilty as I hopped from library to library on my drive north. This may be my local library system, but I’m still a tourist. I should be fulfilling my obligation to add to the local economy, not sucking up publically funded library resources. I know that any librarian would say that everyone is welcome at the library, but I wonder if sometimes it’s best to keep public resources pristine for the locals. 

After the third library, I found a bookstore in the town of Langley. I want to buy a copy of THE STORIED LIFE OF A.J. FIKRY from a curmudgeonly island bookseller, like the main character in the book. Instead, a kindly lady in glasses pointed me toward Gabrielle Zevin’s latest, about the friends who design video games.  

At the northwest tip of the island, I got out of my car to explore Deception Pass State Park, taking the forested path down to the water. In 1792, George Vancouver named the water passage between the island and the mainland. He’d thought Whidbey was a peninsula and apparently felt deceived upon discovering that it was, indeed, an island.  

Over the next weeks, I hit several suburban libraries in towns that get increasingly bigger as they draw nearer to Seattle. These commuter towns are tucked between the mountains and the water, mostly along the main highway. Some branches are in wealthy suburbs, surrounded by parks and walking trails. Others are in strip malls. 

My kids at the library, back when they were so little. Photo by Jenna Vandenberg

I saved my library for last. 

I mean, I go to my library two or three times a week, but it felt extra-special going to my library after visiting the other 23 branches.  

The library between my home and the public high school where I teach is one of those strip mall libraries. There are no floor-to-ceiling windows or paintings of farmland. There are no fireplaces. But the east wall is shared with a party rental hall, so sometimes quinceañera music pulses through the book stacks.  

I park next to the grocery store and walk past bedraggled folks muttering into their piles of plastic bags. I pass the group of vaping young adults who always hang out in the overhang between the grocery store and the strip mall, scanning the hooded figures for the faces of my former students. 

The police officer who mans the door greets me by name and we exchange book recommendations in hushed tones. Young librarians dole out bathroom tokens, help elderly folks log on to laptops, and give directions to the nearest public showers. I spy a group of students in the corner, working away. I wave to them, grab my books from the hold shelf, and feel immense gratitude for these librarians who are holding this space, acting as social workers and tutors in addition to their jobs as bibliophiles. 

I also feel immense gratitude towards the people who made this library a reality, especially since those people were students. 

In 2007 and 2008, as part of their Civics class, High School seniors petitioned for a library in their community. 

Here’s a piece snippet from the Seattle Times:

Currently, there is no place for students at the high school or nearby…Middle School to go when school is out. No Boys & Girls Club or YMCA. The nearest libraries are in Everett or Mill Creek, but because the school is in the county, students are unable to check out books from Everett, and there is no bus service to Mill Creek — or anywhere else, students say...

Students wrote letters to local political leaders, organized voter-registration drives, and last spring submitted a petition for a library to Sno-Isle Regional Libraries with more than 1,200 signatures seeking a local branch. Sno-Isle sent a bookmobile once a week, but said it was unlikely to build a library in an area that could be annexed by Everett.

Luckily, unlikely stuff happens all the time.

In 2017, the library finally opened. I am forever grateful. This is the library where I took my kids to storytime and Lego play dates. It’s the library where we still check out stacks and stacks of books every week. 

Books might lead to enchanted worlds, but libraries are truly magical. Whether they are providing respite from mountain weather, acting as a community gathering place, or holding those third spaces open for folks in need, libraries connect the magic of books to the realities of our communities. May we treasure each and every one.   

Happy National Library Week.

A book to read: LOVE IN THE LIBRARY by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, illustrated by Yas Imamura

I read this picture book to my nine-year-old last night. The picture book is based on the story of the author’s grandparents, who met at the Minidoka Concentration Camp during WWII when Japanese Americans on the West Coast were rounded up and imprisoned. The author’s grandmother, Tama, worked in the library at Minidoka, so there were lots of lovely lines about how books could take you away from life’s problems and/or provide hope for a better future.

Photo by Jenna Vandenberg

But the most impactful piece of the book was the author’s note.

The Author’s Note begins by recapping the Japanese American incarceration. My kid was pretty familiar with this history. We’d recently visited memorials at Bainbridge Island, and she’d just finished reading Alan Gratz’s book about Pearl Harbor which featured a Japanese-American character who dealt with racism after the attacks.

It was the line about the “deeply American tradition of racism” that sparked a great conversation with my daughter. My kid was a bit taken aback. She’d never heard American history described as “racist” (which kinda surprised me. We live in a solid liberal bubble and often talk politics at home). Luckily, Maggie Tokuda-Hall gave some examples for us to talk about: police brutality, Muslim bans, and an immigration policy that separated families and left kids in cages. My daughter talked about how kids at her school often say “that’s racist,” and others are frequently confused about what is or is not racist. Nine-year-olds are at the age where they are just starting the understand the nuances of the word.

My discussions about racism are usually with high school students or adults, so I really appreciate this book (especially the Author’s Note) for giving me the framework to have the discussion with my younger audience.

Some kids almost missed out on the Author’s Note. When Scholastic wanted to license the book, they asked the author to cut the paragraph about American history being deeply rooted in racism.

Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall refused.

NPR recapped this story, a terrible off-shoot of the book-banning problem in America, here. This issue reminds us of the other job of librarians: standing strong against censorship and book banning.

A lesson to teach: A library field trip

Years ago, when I was teaching in Las Vegas, I was desperate to take my students on a field trip, but my school lacked the funding for school buses. No worries. We could walk to the library.

This happened over 15 years ago, so I don’t remember what the librarians said. I don’t remember how I prepared my students for the trip or any assignments that I might have given my students.

The only thing I remember was walking along the sidewalks of a busy four-lane road with a bunch of 8th graders, terrified that one of them would step off the sidewalk and get run over by a car and die and it would be all my fault. I walked backward the entire time, constantly scanning my charges and reminding them to be careful.

Until BAM! My backward-walking self ran smack into a telephone pole and nearly fell. One of my students caught me before I landed in the street.

My lesson: trust your students :)

---