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Couple of things happened this week. I successfully purchased three volumes of Olive Beaupre Miller's MY BOOK HOUSE at a decent price on eBay. I got volumes two, three, and four. And why was I doing this? Because I remembered these books very fondly from my childhood and wanted to have them to read to my grand-daughter when she is a bit older. I didn't remember what was in which volume, but I had four of the older ones (blue) and wanted the earlier green ones as the books are set up so the stories start out with the nursery in volume one and rise to quite sophisticated histories, stories, and legends in the later books. In any case, the three volumes arrived and I sat down just before bedtime with volume two just to "take a peek". I read it just about straight through over the next hour an a half. It wasn't just the stories, it was seeing the pictures and opening doors back into my very early childhood.
The first story is "The Little Red Hen". This was one of my mother's favorites, and in a lot of ways it characterized her entire attitude towards life. I remember having it read to me over and over, and then reading it myself by the time I was four or five. It's not part of the corpus of nursery stories that we usually give to children these days, so you may not be familiar with it. Essentially, there's several farmyard animals, they want various things, the little red hen tries to organize the activities, but all the others have various excuses not to participate. "Then I'll do it myself," said the little red hen, "and she did!" That's the theme of the story.
Now it just happens that this week my reserve on "The Librarian of Basra" came in at the public library. I must have been the last person alive to hear this story, but I only stumbled on it a week or so ago when a public librarian friend in California pointed it out to me. There are remarkable parallels between the librarian of Basra, and the little red hen.
Alia, the head librarian at Basra in Iraq, was afraid when she heard that the Americans were invading her country. She went to the powers that be and asked that the books in the library be moved to keep them safe. Her request was denied. So she began quietly to take piles of the oldest and most valuable books home with her ever evening. Then the Iraqi government occupied the library building and put a gun emplacement on the roof. Alia took home more and more books, and found friends and neighbors to assist her. The Americans invaded, buildings were burning, there was fighting in the streets. Alia got the owner of a restaurant next door to the library to assist her in frantically moving books out of the library and into his restaurant. She rented a truck and with the help of friends moved tons of books to stack them in her home - driving through mortar fire and gun battles. Nine days after the invasion, the library was hit and burned to the ground. Alia had saved 35,000 books - more than three-quarters of the books in the library. "Then I'll do it myself," said the librarian of Basra, "And she did!"
The first story is "The Little Red Hen". This was one of my mother's favorites, and in a lot of ways it characterized her entire attitude towards life. I remember having it read to me over and over, and then reading it myself by the time I was four or five. It's not part of the corpus of nursery stories that we usually give to children these days, so you may not be familiar with it. Essentially, there's several farmyard animals, they want various things, the little red hen tries to organize the activities, but all the others have various excuses not to participate. "Then I'll do it myself," said the little red hen, "and she did!" That's the theme of the story.
Now it just happens that this week my reserve on "The Librarian of Basra" came in at the public library. I must have been the last person alive to hear this story, but I only stumbled on it a week or so ago when a public librarian friend in California pointed it out to me. There are remarkable parallels between the librarian of Basra, and the little red hen.
Alia, the head librarian at Basra in Iraq, was afraid when she heard that the Americans were invading her country. She went to the powers that be and asked that the books in the library be moved to keep them safe. Her request was denied. So she began quietly to take piles of the oldest and most valuable books home with her ever evening. Then the Iraqi government occupied the library building and put a gun emplacement on the roof. Alia took home more and more books, and found friends and neighbors to assist her. The Americans invaded, buildings were burning, there was fighting in the streets. Alia got the owner of a restaurant next door to the library to assist her in frantically moving books out of the library and into his restaurant. She rented a truck and with the help of friends moved tons of books to stack them in her home - driving through mortar fire and gun battles. Nine days after the invasion, the library was hit and burned to the ground. Alia had saved 35,000 books - more than three-quarters of the books in the library. "Then I'll do it myself," said the librarian of Basra, "And she did!"
