Errands & book fair

Normally Paloma does not like to go to the car wash, but this time she did because she got to watch from inside. We'd just had my car inspected and the full service wash came with it. It was rainy out but I had emptied it out for this purpose so we went ahead and had it washed.
After that we went to the kids' school to see about the Book Fair.
I have a dilemma when it comes to book shopping with the kids. On one hand, I want them to have the experience of choosing their own books. I remember fondly choosing my own books as a child, as far back as first grade, when I ordered a book called The Shy Girl because I was painfully shy (at school, anyway—at home and in our neighborhood I was self-assured and outgoing, even bossy).
However, our house is full of books. My mom once joked that she was afraid our house would collapse from the amount of books we have.

Our office is lined with shelves that are packed with books, and there’s a bookshelf in each child’s room, as well as bookshelves in our bedroom, the den, and the living room. Furthermore, we have board books out the wazoo, mostly in baskets. We have more than a dozen bath books in the window of the kids’ bathroom, as basket full of potty books and a whole shelf of cloth books that we can put in the crib. In the window sills of our breakfast area, we have three baskets of food books.

Unfortunately there are also several office boxes of books here that used to be at school. See, back in the day, our district required kids to read outside of school, and I did my best to help supply reluctant readers with something interesting. But when I moved to my current school, I discovered that students were not being asked or even encouraged to read outside of class. And not only did they not read; they destroyed my books for no reason. So I brought them home.

Another crazy thing is we’re constantly checking out books from the library, as well.

I guess the only room that doesn't have books in it is the laundry room. And I have a thought about that, actually!

One time Amy asked me, "Why don’t you get rid of all these books?" But my answer is a quote by Thomas Jefferson: "I cannot live without books. " I need to be able to find a passage as I think of it from books I’ve read. My memory is good, but not good enough that I’d be able to find a passage if I didn’t still have the books. And I'm a visual person; I remember what a book looks like rather than the title sometimes... what color the spine is or the text.

Anyway because we already are at capacity, shelf-wise, I am picky about what else comes in the house. I am lucky that their school librarian is a friend and neighbor. She was in the same first library science class that I took in 2002, but when I stopped after that one class, she kept going. She is patient with us (we just found one book under the love seat that we'll return in August) and tells me about new books I need to know about.

Anyway when the Book Fair comes to the kids’ school, they come home with a wish list of books they’d like to have. This time Carmen had a bunch of books on her list that I didn't want to buy:

1. Magic Treehouse books, which are fine, but which she goes through in about a half hour, so I don't want to buy hard cover copies at hardcover prices.
2. Disney Fairy books, which I don't want to buy at all.
3. Junie B. Jones books (which she has already read).

I am open-minded about what she reads--as far as that goes, she's welcome to check out virtually anything she's interested in at the library. I am not going to restrict her reading, but I do try to guide her. I'd rather her read Harry Potter than Captain Underpants (not that she would) or The Golden Compass. I prefer sassy Junie B. to the gross factor of Judy Moody. She's read so many Magic Treehouse books that she wants to visit Pennsylvania because that's where the books are set (that's my girl!).

But the point is, I don't want to BUY books that I don't want to read again. So we didn't end up getting much. And actually we had to leave quickly because I'd forgotten Paloma was wearing panties.