How I Choose Books for my Personal Little Library
The reasons why I decided to create my personal children’s library are very personal.
I have mentioned elsewhere that you should never make assumptions about who your audience might be or what they might be going through. I personally did not have an easy childhood. I don’t remember ever reading with an adult when I was a child, not at home or at school, and I did not have many books.
In fact, throughout my childhood I only had one book, and that was Richard Scarry’s Best Storybook Ever. Man, did I love that book! I knew that book by heart from cover to cover, all 288 pages of it. From the “good morning!” sun on the front cover to the “good night! sleep tight!” moon on the back cover, I read that book everyday. I don’t even know who gave me that book, but it saved me. That is the power of one book.
I learned a lot from that book including learning about shapes and colors, letters, numbers, and the names of things. When I think about it, this book would make a great pick to donate to a community library or little free library because it has a lot of variety.
There were lots of things that I learned from that book, and I absolutely loved it. But there were many other things that I wish I had learned about but didn’t, at least not until I was much older.
These are some of the things that I wish I knew when I was younger (or maybe I knew them at some level, but wish I had validation for)
– in no particular order:
That people are all equal
That people are all basically good
That I am special, and so is everybody else
That I am OK, just as I am
That feelings are OK
That I am lovable
That I can trust myself
That I am powerful
That I have a voice
That I have choices and should make them
That we all live on the same planet (and we need to take care of it)
That there is a big wide world out there, ready to be explored
That we are all connected to all life
That there is always hope
So I look for books that embody these basic truths. Said another way, the criteria for books in my personal children’s library are…
Does it embody:
Truth
Beauty
Peace
Joy
Kindness
Connectedness
Hope
Inspiration
What criteria do you look for when adding books to your children’s library? Please let me know by commenting below.
