Library Books Read-A-Thon Day 2 Sharing My Library Story

Welcome to Day 2 of The Library Books Readathon. Today I'm going to share my library story. Sorry this post is quite long. I would love to hear everybody else's library story.

Queen Ella Bee did a post about her library story something I had never really thought about, but she inspired me to share my library story with all of you. Although I didn't go through as long of a period without the library as she did. I'm so glad Gaby has found her love for her local library.

We get library cards in my public library system when we turn 7. At 7 I would have been a first grader.  I remember that day finally holding my brand new red library card in my hand. Before that day came my daycare provider and my mom were always more than happy to check out books for me. Our library has a bus called The Bookmobile. It came to my daycare every couple of weeks. All us daycare kids loved going to The Bookmobile and checking out new books to read.

A fact that is hard to believe now, but really change and effected my reading life. When I was four we discovered that I had a lazy eye. My left eye didn't want to work as hard as my right eye. I had to wear a patch over my eye from 1st grade to 3rd grade and then after school until 5th grade. I was picked on a lot for wearing that patch and I hated wearing it too, but my parents knew what was best for me. Kids are mean. To put things into perspective I would have been blind in my left eye if I didn't wear the patch. Although the vision is weaker in my left eye than my right I still have full use of both eyes. My first grade teacher worried about my reading level. She told my parents I just wasn't catching on as fast as the other kids and she wondered if I had problem seeing the board because I was only seeing out of one eye because of the patch. I was put in Title where I had help learning to read. I loved going to Title, but by the beginning of 2nd grade year I graduated from Title. I no longer needed her help.

Once I discovered how to read my whole world took off. I was amazed by books and started to read every book I could get my hand on. In Elementary school we had library time and AR points. You read books and took a test on the books for AR points which you could spend at the AR store. I got my favorite stuffed animal, Miss Spider, from the AR store. Although I didn't read as fast as other kids I loved to read books.

Every summer at daycare we continued to go to the Bookmobile and I became more appreciate of the library. Then once we entered middle school library time stopped and my favorite part of our day was gone. The library was still accessible, you just had to go there on your own time. This was the time when I fell in love with The Little House on the Prairie books. I hadn't yet discovered online requesting at this point (which I will talk about tomorrow). I would find the name of the next book and the Librarian would either help me find it on the shelf or she would request the book for me. Through eighth grade the Librarians were great about helping me with my obsession for reading.

Then I entered high school and I discovered the magic of online requesting. This helped me discover so many new books I could get from the library. I continued to enjoy being in the library. I had a lot of free time during my senior year and I would often go down to the library to study, talk with friends, or read. The Librarians all know me by name (we are a small branch) and always expect me to be bringing a stack of books back or checking out a stack of books.

That is my story through High School. sorry this post is so long. If you read the whole thing congrats. I will talk about my experience with the library as a college student later this week.

Update your progress below. If you are going to use the same post all week today is the only day you will need to link up. I'm going to use the same linky list for the entire week. Come back tomorrow as I talk about Requesting Books.