Friends of the Libraries' Guest Columnist Features The life-changing library By Patricia Westfall February 7, 2004 The Athens Messenger

When I was 5, almost 6, I spent a summer with my aunt while my mother was having a baby. Aunt Bessie decided I needed to discover libraries. She took me to a huge, castle-like building and introduced me to the librarian, who immediately asked how old I was. The librarian then led us to what she called "the first grade shelves" and left us. I spent the next half hour or so happily pulling books off shelf after shelf.

At home some weeks later I told Mom all about it -- the big windows, the carpet, the toys scattered around the room, and the hundreds and hundreds of picture books. Mom took the hint and took me to our local library.

I was a sophisticate now, of course. I knew libraries, how they worked, how to think about them, how to negotiate with librarians. I strode boldly up to the librarian and asked, "Where are the first grade shelves?"

She looked at me oddly, then took me to a tiny, half-full shelf and said these books were for first and second graders.

Slim pickin's would be high praise for the choices on that shelf. There were bunny books. There were more bunny books. Then there were bunny books which if I squinted my eyes and stood on my head I could pretend were not bunny books. It had to be the most boring shelf in the history of bookdom. It was painful to think that I'd have to endure that shelf for two years.

Finally, I rebelled. I approached the librarian again. My knees quaked. She must know I was only in the first grade. "Where," I quavered, "are the third grade books?"

Again that odd look and she said, "There is no third grade shelf," but as she said it she swept her arm to encompass all the books in that room. I could have any book I wanted, the hand gesture said.

It also said I could have had any book I wanted before now as well. Nothing had been confining me to that bunny shelf except my own assumptions.

I did not have the verbal skills then to express the insight, but I felt it strongly and it remains with me even now as an important idea shaping my adult thinking. If I feel confined, am I the one confining my thinking? Are my own assumptions my cage? The answer more often that not yes. The whole world awaits if I have the wit to let go of my own preconceptions.

I remember looking around that book-choked room with both joy and chagrin. It was a powerful lesson in how to be free although it was not a lesson without scars. To this day I loath bunny books.

Patricia Westfall is author of two novels and two works of nonfiction. She is also a professor of journalism at Ohio University.