BOOKS AND LIBRARIES FOR CHILDREN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 16 November 1945, Page 2

BOOKS AND LIBRARIES FOR CHILDREN

IN COMMUNITY EXTENSION WORK It is now pretty generally recognised that the education of a community needs a focal point for ideas. Such a place may take many forms; in the old days it was the village green, or the market-place, or the tap-room of the inn. Here in New Zealand in the little country township where I lived as a boy nearly 40 years ago it was the blacksmith’s shop (writes H. C. D. Somerset, Community Centre, Feilding). I well remember how we would sneak in on our way home from school to join the ring of men and horses round the anvil, to listen to the small-town gossip and to hear the words of wisdom that filled up the spaces between the making of one shoe and the next. He was a great Rodinesque conception of a man, “The Thinker” in a leather apron; he could turn out ideas faster than he could nail on a shoe, and fit them sonorously to a mellow Scottish burr. He had three favourite authors, Darwin, Huxley and Rabbie Burns. I first heard about “the best-laid schemes o’mice and men” at his anvil: there also my heart flared up in indignation at “man’s inhumanity to man.” It was on my ear that he once pointed out Darwin’s tip to an amused ring of farmers in dungarees and horse-breakers in leggings. Even to-day I never hear of Darwin but I smell the smoke from a searing shoe and a sizzling hoof. But he never spoke without due and proper documentation. In the little I paint-shop behind the smithy was a | short row of well-pondered books. Any- | one who showed an interest would have one offered to him. “Tak this hame an’ read, mon. Forget about the missis for one night, an’ sit up an’ read, mon read.” I looked forward to the day when I would be old enough and important I enough to be offered one of these books which 1 felt sure were exciting beyond those in my schoolbag. And then one day he lent mo one. It was only a worn copy of Conan Doyle’s Micah Clarke but I carried it home as though it had been one of the Sybilline books. That book cut to ribbons my firmament of time and space and that very night I I was on the way to Taunton with Monmouth’s men . . . Times have changed and now you will look in vain for the old blacksmith’s shop; but the needs of mice and men—and children—are pretty much the same. They need, next only to feed and shelter, companionship and talk; they need to get free of time and space by entering worlds in widening spirals beyond their own. In other words, they negri books. An effective library is the fiflt need of every community centre—a library that does its work by going out to meet people as the blacksmith friend 0 f my youth did. “Here’s a book, mon.” says the new librarian; “tak it hame an’ Lead.” Above all, it is the children who need books .They need them most when they are young and their imaginations are still unspoiled: when they are young and have time to read. The new books that are available in the children’s .libraries and in the school extension of the Country Library Service give the child all the joy of reading while leading him simply and naturally to an understanding of other people and other times. Every community should have its children's library service. It is not enough to have school libraries alone, for a' 1 jliday times children can best enjoy their reading. We have (ought a war against ignorance and repressions; it is now important for the future of the human race tc let the people think it is more important still to let the children read I If this is done in generous measure by the community through the skflled service of the trained librarian, many of the problems of adult education will be far on their way towards solution.