Michigan

A World of Imagination in One Building

By Jennifer A. 

I’m 30 now and don’t live near the public library in my hometown of Midland, MI, but I will never forget it. It doesn’t look the same as it did 20+ years ago – it now has a coffee shop, a teen room, and several updated and refreshed spaces – but it still has the feeling, that feeling you get when you walk into a library and there awaits endless choices of where your imagination can take you inside its shelves. My mother or father took me to the library every 1-2 weeks to pick as many books as I could possibly want from the shelves to take home. When I was little, it was picture books, and boy does Grace A. Dow Memorial Library have a lot of those. I competed in Battle of the Books at the Library. I participated in the Summer Reading Program EVERY summer to get the free TCBY coupons and free Pizza Hut personal pan pizza.

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Making Childhood Memories at the library

By Candice K.

Many of my memories from my own childhood are from visits at our local library. After all, it was a convenient and easy place for my mom to take us since it was right around the block from my house. I remember how excited I was to enter the children’s section and to pick out new Curious George and Amelia Bedelia books. Boy, was I excited to read them with my mom as soon as we got home!

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High School Dropout to Lawyer: A Library Success Story

By Carol S.

This is my father’s story: He was a high school dropout. Although he loved to read, he didn’t like school, so he would frequently ditch class and hide out at the Detroit Public Library, devouring books until the truant officer found him and dragged him back to school. Eventually he dropped out of school altogether in order to work. (This was during the Great Depression, and his family necessarily valued employment over education.)

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First to Graduate

By Debra K. 

I first discovered the world was much larger and more exciting and exotic than I had ever imagined thanks to my local public and school libraries. Though I loved school as a child, it was mostly due to the social aspects rather than the learning, that is until I read my first young adult novel in early middle school, which sparked a serious (some would say obsessive) love of reading. By the end of middle school I was reading a book a day — sometimes hidden behind my textbook in the back of class. I took my current book with me everywhere — often bumping into furniture and walls at home as I walked and read. This earned me the nickname of Mrs. Magoo after a beloved myopic cartoon character popular at the time.

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