Last week I finally tackled the toppling piles of books in our library which had been accumulating for months. Once I accepted I couldn’t fit all those books onto the shelves, I began a ruthless cull, tossing books that I had considered treasures yet no-one else did. Thirteen boxes of books departed the house making one friend extremely happy and liberating me to enjoy actually having space on my shelves!:) The culling still didn’t enable all the books to fit onto the shelves, but pulling all the picture books out of their bookcase did.
For so long I haven’t been happy with having the picture books in a bookcase, I felt that the small visual of skinny spines wasn’t encouraging the children to browse and select. I was certain if I could only find a way to visually present the front covers of books the children would be more aware of what was available and would enthusiastically browse and select. To this end I placed two small children’s tables in the library, scrounged around the farm for boxes that were not too tall and sorted the picture books into various boxes.
Each box is collated by category; Australian, History/Geography etc. The children can easily flip through a box and see what is available, they have been happily discovering old and new favourites.
Aesthetically they aren’t pretty nor are they the final solution, I still hope to win the book bins at our town library’s auction, failing that we will build our book bins ourselves. But for now this is working, Jem particularly is drawn to the new layout, every night he races into the library and carefully selects what books I am to read. A win!