Libraries, Librarians and Other Odd Things

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livlife

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I'll have you know I cleared it with lovespirit to go ahead and blog this in lieu of the blog about Christian Kane. (I am at work and don't have the time to dedicate to his blog that I will need, PLUS I don't have the video uploaded at work, it is on my home computer).

So, just another delay--

But I will try and fill it with interesting tidbits.

FIRST:

Libraries- A man came up to me and in broken English, described that his son needed a book. He was assigned to write his life story at school and he had no idea how to do that. The dad didn't feel he could help him because his English was not good enough. So, they were wondering if there was a book, written for children (the son is 12) on how to write an autobiographical essay for school. I was a little concerned--I mean, that's a pretty specific topic. But, I dove into the catalog head first and after a bit of digging, I found:

How to write your life story by Ralph Fletcher. Written for kids! AND, it was checked in at my library. Isn't that amazing? I love the library. It was so incredibly cool and they were such a great family. It is always nice to see people turn to the library when they need help. And even more so when we can deliver.

THEN:

Librarians- This one was kind of cool, too. You see, this little girl (I'm gonna guess 4th grade) came in to the library. She was so petite (her backpack was bigger than her!) and darling, I just wanted to hug her. She told me her teacher was reading a book to their class. She really liked the book and wanted to read it herself because she didn't want to wait for the teacher to finish it. I asked her what the name was and she said, "Shallow". I looked it up and didn't find anything. So I asked her again and again, she said, "shallow". I said, "shallow, like the shallow end of a swimming pool?" And she got this HUGE smile on her face and started nodding frantically and said "Yes!". But, unfortunately, there isn't anything by that title in our catalog. So I asked the girl if she knew anything more about the book and she said no. No author or anything...just the title (which she confided she had been remembering ALL DAY!). Without anything else to go on, I was worried this little peanut was going to go away unhappy, until she said, "the cover has a picture of a boy holding a dog".

And Wham!, something clicked in my memory banks. I immediately typed in "Shiloh" and this came up:

I showed it to her and she jumped (actually jumped) and said, "that's it!". And it was checked in. So she got to take it home with her tonight and can read it before bed. No more waiting to see what will happen next.

When I looked at the catalog entries, I saw that this book has been issued with multiple covers, and this is the ONLY one that features a boy holding a dog. The others pretty much only feature the dog. So how is it that this book, which I haven't read since I was this girls age, would pop into my mind based on so very little information?

Isn't that craziness? Either that or else I am just an undiagnosed savant. Clearly, those are the only explanations.

FINALLY:

Other Odd Things - Today is 9/9/9. Did you know that? According to LiveScience, this is a pretty special day. They claim it will be the "last set of repeating, single-digit dates that we'll see for almost a century (until January 1, 2101), or a millennium (mark your calendars for January 1, 3001), depending on how you want to count it." I personally think that is crap, because why is 9/9/09 more special than 10/10/10 or 11/11/11, etc?

But, what is cool about this day is that nine is a pretty special number in numerology, which you can find a bit more about if you read the article. I've always found things like that to be interesting. What's way weird about this? Well, while in the midst of typing this up, a student came up to me with a math question. She needed to know how to figure out the question:

If a student got 90% on a math test and only missed 3 questions, how many questions are on the test?

Did you notice how the question deals with 9's?

Yep, that's a pretty odd thing.

Okay, my "power of the library" stories are now complete. I shall go and lock the building, hustle home to watch the season finale of Leverage (Christian Kane's tv show!) and then I will finally get around to posting the blog of the concert.

Adieu till later....gator.