As my friends will know, I have a "Mathilda"-esque preoccupation with libraries and my excitement over the opening of West Bridgford Library reached it's pinnacle today when I actually crossed the threshold at last!
I only had 5 minutes left of my lunch break, but managed to bump into Husband and Abi, which was a bit of a surprise. Here is a photo of the little lady herself, that Husband took in the library (yes they are salapettes - it was cold today).
It took us all of 30 seconds to find an Usborne book, which isn't surprising as any children's section in a library would surely be incomplete without.
For those of us developing a home library, this is a huge advantage because we can try before we buy! I hate to buy a book for my son or daughter and then find that they dis-like or are dis-interested in the content. (By the way, this very rarely happens but there have been occasions where I have bought a book and found that James is scared of a picture in it, for example a picture of a spider or a vampire and he hasn't gone near them since!).
Don't you agree that it's much better to allow our children to lead the way when it comes to choosing books? Libraries are such a relaxed environment in which to do this (and surely preferable to a book shop). Observe the types of books your child makes a bee line for. Special interests reveal themselves in children from a young age.
As for James, spiders/vampires are out for now...dinosaurs and space definitly in.
