On Creating my Library

This picture is too good for this post lol

During elementary school, I’d compete in those summer reading challenges at the Redwood City Public Library. You remember those programs where they’d incentivize you to make sure to read and in exchange, you could go get some free pizza (Round Table in my case)? In the few years, I did participate, I don’t think I ever cashed in and used my pizza reward coupon. But I did read. It was the jostling with my mom at times about being excited to go to the library to pick up a new mystery or graphic novel that was peak excitement and joy for me. There was always something about a library being filled with all of these different characters and people who would find some collective interest in coming together in this one space. As I’d be browsing through kids’ novels, my mom would be looking through biographies or historical fiction books. I’d see the same retired folks coming in to use that one particular computer near the front so the person who worked at the tech desk was within an earshot of a call for help. There was no telling what you would see or who you could run into at the library, but that’s probably why it drew my family to frequent visits.

I’m not alone in remembering how the widespread access to technology growing up in the smartphone age drew us away from books. I’m also certainly not alone in the ways that schools with swift precision crushed a lot of our excitement and joy from reading as…