I discovered the library when I was in second grade. That
was the Big Year we were allowed to visit the Bookmobile and take out books.
Somewhere in those early years, I found Harold and the Purple Crayon – and I
took it out as one of my two choices as often as I could. I loved that book,
although I couldn’t have told you why. At least, not then. Now I suspect it had
something to do with creating one’s own reality – much the way I love to do
when I write stories.
By fourth or fifth grade, my dad was taking us for weekly
visits to our local library branch on Winton Road in Rochester, NY (my
hometown). This was a brand-new building with a large children’s room and more
books than I’d ever seen in one place. I loved it. My dad would let my brother
and I go – and being off the leash, I suspect, was part of the allure. We were
free to roam throughout the room and read as many books as we wanted while he
sat down and read the newspaper – or chose books of his own from the “Big
People” room (as I thought of the main reading room). When he came into the
children’s room, it was time to show him the two choices we’d made and take
them up to the desk to get them stamped, just like an adult. Heaven!
Somewhere in fifth grade or so, I discovered the Sue Barton
books in the children’s section. Sue Barton, if you’ve never heard of her, was
a nurse. Throughout the seven books in the series, you followed her all the way
from her first moments in training (Sue Barton, Student Nurse), all the way
through getting her cap, getting married to the handsome young intern she met
at the start (now a doctor, of course), through her adventures as a Visiting
Nurse, a Superintendent of Nurses, and eventually, a staff nurse. I read them
all. Over and over again, to my mother’s chagrin. “There are other books in the
library, you know,” she told me when I restarted the series for the third time.
“I know,” I told her. “But I’m going to be a nurse…and these
are good books!”
Well, my dream of being a nurse took a nosedive in 6th
grade when we were shown a 16 mm print of a cornea transplant. I stopped
re-reading Sue Barton, and by the time I got to 7th grade, the
Winton Road Library had a new section: Young Adult. There I discovered Ray
Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and the whole new world of science fiction. Sue
remained a favorite memory, although I didn’t take her books out anymore.
Time marches on, the newsreels tell us, and I found other
parts of the library as well (an entire section dedicated to plays!). New
genre, new interests, and eventually, new libraries to explore – all of which
left the children’s room at the Winton Road Library in the dust.
Recently I had cause to go through some of the boxes of
books in our attic, most of which contain books I had from my childhood. I’d
kept them for my own kids, but discovered (as all parents do), that my reading
tastes were not theirs. In order to make more room on my study shelves, I’d
boxed up all their books as well as all my own. In an effort to streamline (and
make more room in the attic), I decided to hoe out some of those books. Time to
pass them along.
And who should I discover in the dark recesses of the attic,
and my equally cobwebby memories? Sue Barton! I’d found four of the books by
Helen Dore Boylston at a library sale before my kids were born and had bought
them out of my remembered love of them. But I hadn’t re-read them at that time.
For whatever reason, they had simply gone into the boxes for storage.
Now, however, I couldn’t resist. With some (okay, a LOT) of
trepidation, I opened Sue Barton, Student Nurse. What if it didn’t stand up to
the test of time? Would it be as wonderful as I remembered? How disappointed
would I be if I discovered it was terrible?
I read the first few pages, pages that were brown and
fragile with age. Then I read a few more. And just one more chapter…I was
hooked. The writing is still engaging, still fresh, and still pulls me in after
all this time. While dated (it was written in 1936 and medicine has made some
advances since then), its still a wonderful story about a red-headed nurse and
the adventures she has along the way. While we no longer have hospital wards
and nurses no longer have to wrap their own bandages, nurses still wear
soft-soled shoes and work harder than anyone realizes. The books still stand as
a testament to a profession that deserves our respect – and our thanks.
So thank you, nurses – and thank you Winton Road Library,
for allowing me to take those books out over and over and over. You gave me a
love of reading – and reading takes me to new worlds and shows me new ideas. I
passed by you not too long ago, and wished I had time to stop in. Would you,
like Sue Barton, have withstood the test of time? Will you still have that new
building/old books smell that I came to love? Will people still be sitting
around reading and will the children’s room still hold magic? I no longer live
in your neighborhood, but I do believe I may have to visit and see.
Play safe,
Diana, who is feeling nostalgic – and who will proudly admit
she read not one, but TWO Sue Barton books that day. Two more to go! J
