Decade Three Begins!

Holy kittycats! If my accounting is correct, I have just begun my twenty-first time around the sun in the Paideia Library. Much has changed, much has remained the same. Just yesterday I attended an English department meeting, held in a classroom that in 1993 comprised 25% of the library space in the whole school (complete with fireplace and bathroom). Now we have a spacious comfortable junior high & high school library in the heart of the campus, an elementary library in the heart of the elementary school, and a huge array of wonderful online resources in addition to print and audio, and our latest offering -- downloadable ebooks and audiobooks for library loaning. On the other hand, many things are this year's variations on eternal themes . . .

•  the backlog of shelving all the summer checkouts that are slowly returning home  --

•  marveling at the range of junior high students' summer reading choices. Many from our library, and many more that are new to me. I always learn about wonderful new books from these responses.

For example:
Martha & Greg's 7th graders       Martha & Greg's 8th graders      Jennifer & Tony's class

•  talking with high school students about what they read, and sharing my favorite reads of the summer with them.   Alex G. is really into lawyer novels, and I can now recommend the Lincoln Lawyer series (we have ebook and print), having finished everything by Michael Connelley in a great rush of candy/escape reading in June (thanks to Bill Clinton for the recommendation).  After the mystery/detective feast, I moved on to the wonderful The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch, and really enjoyed discovering Thieftaker, an urban historical fantasy by D.B. Jackson (who's really high fantasy author David Coe, whose daughters swim on a summer team with my kids in Tennessee).  It and the just-published sequel Thieftaker's Quarry will be coming in the book sale.  I may buy and donate the sequel myself -- I can't wait to read it!

• the fun of preparing for October's Library Book Sale.  We'll be getting several additions to the Spanish fiction collection, and many other great new books.  Yippee!

In other words, school is in and it's looking to be a good year.  What are your start-of-school routines?