MMmmmmm children’s bookstore
I don’t like bookstores. (That’s another story for another time.) My nephew had a birthday over the weekend and I decided to get him some books. Today, I went to a children’s bookstore near my office because they had a book in the window I thought would be very appropriate for him. While I was browsing in there, I thought about how much I enjoy going to that particular bookstore and how much I don’t like going to bookstores in general. I like kiddie lit. I admit it. I read a few–some just for myself–and thought back on the days when I browsed the kiddie section of a college library I worked at regularly. Mostly because the books were always so hideously out of order, that reshelving books in that section meant rearranging the books on the shelves, too. I couldn’t help noticing a number of controversial children’s books on the shelves, either.
I also found a children’s book about a visit to a library I hadn’t read before: Curious George Goes to the Library. George goes to story hour, then takes off with a book about dinosaurs. As he goes through the library, he starts grabbing books he wants. He discovers the rolling shelving carts and decides to put his huge pile of books on a cart to try to roll them home. Of course, he crashes before he gets out of the library and gets in a little bit of trouble with a male library volunteer. But in the end, he gets a library card and gets to check out some books. It’s great, except that the book perpetuates the stereotype of the female librarian with short hair who dresses nicely and shushes everyone.
Anyway…maybe I’ll spend some more time in that bookstore, especially since they have nifty glow-in-the-dark bugs right now. They’re looking for a bookseller…
More Curious George stuff:
The official Curious George Web site
Virtual Tour of an exhibit at the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection in Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Curious George Cottage in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire
Addendum 9/14: Read a short blip about a visit to the Curious George Cottage I made on 9/12/03.
July 29th, 2003 at 5:46 pm
Hmmm…I did not know that they are hiring. I need a second job…
Last week I was going to write a post about the annual children’s lit conference at Simmons, but I thought no one would read it. Once upon a time, my blog was going to be all about children’s lit., especially children’s literature in special collections. But no one commented on my posts with that theme
.
Glad to see that someone is writing about this topic!