I’ve always been grateful to the library

  During my middle and high school years, the library was a destination for me. I knew people who only went to the library when they had reports to research or long papers to write, and I always felt that they were missing out on all that I had seen and done within those quiet walls.

Our library had a Teen Club, which was led by a creative and energetic Children’s and Young Adult librarian, met weekly to plan and organize library events for young people. More than this, it was a place and a time where a group of kids from varying backgrounds could come together and, through a love of books and an early fondness for the libraries that hold them, become close and lasting friends. We organized puppet shows for young kids and writing contests for older ones; ran our own literary magazine (‘Teen Talk’); and helped raise publicity and donations for the library.

Our most lasting (and most fun) activity was a monthly coffeehouse that epitomized what a library should be – a storehouse of knowledge, with free and easy access to its books for all, and with no limits on what can be read, retained, and carried away for the rest of one’s life. Our coffeehouses were held in a walled-off section of the library with cinderblock walls. The lights were turned down and a stage was placed in the front, with a table full of goodies in the back. It wasn’t quite the stuff of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen or the Chelsea Hotel, but the library coffeehouses were a way for us, outside of school, away from parents, to get together and read out loud the things we spent each day thinking. I’ve always been grateful to the library for that, and the librarian who ran it. - Evelyn, Vineland Public Library