Show me a SAHM, and I will show you someone with a superb knowledge of library activities. I am blessed to have lived, with children, in two villages/ towns with friendly, welcoming libraries that give me, as a mother, a chance to feel human, and the kids a chance to charge about with a Nick Sharrett book.
When I only had one child, I lived in Hackney, Central London. I never made it to the library, although I knew it was a good one. When son was 6 months, we moved to Cambridgeshire. It was also around then that we found we had daughter on the way. Our new home was Melbourn Village. Melbourn, in the south of Cambridgeshire, does not have a library full tilt. It has something much better, a library access point (LAP) staffed by approachable men and women of retirable age , who volunteer their services in a terrapin soon to be put out to graze. They open afternoons and are LOVELY to you with wee ones. The kids library there is well stocked, rotated with central library stock, and more importantly, left to the kids. There are games, crayons, jigsaws, and kind staff who talk to your kids and play to allow you to pick out a read for yourself.I could turn up, pass son into the hands of kindly aunt like volunteers who did puzzles, and choose Henning Mankel books for myself. I loved that library.
But we moved, when we had daughter, 1, and son, bit more, to Chatteris, Fenland. Their library is a PROPER library. I was wary of DS and DD running riot and playing, this wasn't the terrapin of ladies they'd been used to. But, this library is great.
A large selection of kids books in a Thomas train, librarians who allow noise, a goodly adult selection and computers to boot. I can let my two climb Thomas for 15 mins while I choose books (I recently asked for chicken keeping books and the librarian was SO great, and chicken obsessed as it turns out). I am able to have the odd quiet moment there, even with 2 under 3, and love it. The non-fiction is well stocked, and, as I find age makes me less willing to read bad fiction, this makes me happy. I may even get round to the local history.
But I go off point. I have two (noisy) kids, one just 3, the other not far behind. Chatteris library welcomes them and me, reassures me about noise, can get me inter library stuff, and at the same time as treating me as an adult, will give me lee-way for the kids ("here's the key for the loo, your wee daughter has gone into the corner....)
Libraries, use them or lose them.
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